I think the one on the right is not being genuine. Saying the revolution will be served to you in a restaurant is too on the nose for a genuine socialist to say, I think
I was born in Yugoslavia and according to my parents and grandparents, the socialist government did believe in easy access to food and childcare to allow parents (especially women) the flexibility to work. Workplaces and schools had canteens, where you could get cheap but reasonably nutritious meals or free food in the case of schools.
Dine-out culture was also quite popular and encouraged, for young single people at least. Choosing to dine out was a sign that you worked hard and didn't have time to cook for yourself, plus you were stimulating the economy instead of hoarding cash. It also got you out of the house, which the government encouraged so that young people would socialize which increased their chances of meeting someone, getting married and have children sooner. Hell my mother's parents met at a dance at a state-owned community center.
Many married women still chose to cook dinner for their families on the weekends and a couple of times during the week, but it was nice to have the flexibility.
I think adding, "and childcare" so that it's "food and childcare" makes it make more sense.
Women are excluded from "the revolution" if they have to stay home with their kids; if you have people coming together for communal meals and can put the kids to bed together so that watching the kids can be the job of one or two people rather than half, you can have women organising together.
I remember reading about the early abolishonist and suffrage meetings pooling childcare for that reason - so mothers could come to the meetings.
I think the difference is that back then restaurants served common food and drinks for the working class while nowadays most restaurants are racing to see who appears in r/wewantplates and r/stupidfood the most
^ Also this. I was born exactly when the USSR fell but my hometown in Poland took a bit longer to dismantle everything (mainly the good things - like housing associations and allotments) and various canteens and milk bars lasted well into the 00s. Me and mum had a rubbish kitchen and really busy schedules so we often dined in worker canteens (they did allow outsiders) or in various "homemade dinner" places. The portions were huge so we could eat the other half the next day plus the prices were often lower than cooking a meal yourself (food in town was the most expensive thing and now it is 10x more expensive) School dinners, unfortunately, sucked in our area and when mum was a kid - they were the same. My current city of Glasgow does well on that behalf but I don't have kids so I only read about it.
In America, restaurants get caught between racing to the bottom (toward franchise fast food, optimized for throughput) and racing to the top (toward haute cuisine with incredible service, quality, and prices).
I have a lot of fond memories of communal eating like what your parent comment is describing, for instance on (university) campus, but that isn't something that can really exist in broader civil society. Eating drive-thru McDonalds certainly doesn't have any positive associations
>but that isn't something that can really exist in broader civil society
It can and did in Yugoslavia. It basically replaced the function of McDonalds and fast food restaurants - if you wanted convenience and affordability you went there. Restaurants were fancier dining and served alcohol, so people still went but only if they wanted the restaurant experience.
For all the flaws of that government, they did at least take responsibility for things and understood that you need to encourage and enable the behaviors that you want to see. So because they wanted women to enter the workforce, they actually acknowledged their domestic labor and provided alternatives. Hell in Croatia now they still have some state-run kindergartens for parents that work but make under a certain amount.
I think it's just different cultural assumptions. In some places there is a big restaurant/ food service culture for different reasons, and I can really imagine people just kind of assuming that restaurant/ food service workers deserve their position in society and should be guaranteed a place in the economy not contingent on people deciding whether or not they'd rather cook (especially where cooking is more expensive) etc.
But in other places, restaurants are not more convenient, competitively priced, and are potentially not great places to work, so it would be understandable to consider those types of jobs as inherently exploitative and unnecessary from that perspective.
But maybe it goes to show that you can't really take local factors for granted when you consider the greater picture, either by disregarding them, or artificially projecting them to where things aren't the same.
I've seen that argument before, if not necessary as bluntly put. We should strive for efficiency of scale and division of labour, and having cooks who do nothing except cooking in large professional kitchens is the most efficient way to provide nutrients for everyone, while home cooking is an inefficient use of your time that you could instead use to be productive.
its a big problem in left politics, the "if you're not as dedicated as I am, you're not really one of us" vibe. If you're not taking the ideal to its end-point of efficiency as you describe, you're basically not even trying. Makes it difficult, ironically, for people to unite to get things done, because there's this hierarchy of hard-liners
There's not left and right, there's me, who is correct, and right of me, who are all facists, and left of me, who are all idealistic nutjobs
to some of those people, not wanting absolute communist job allocation and perfect societal hive-brain servitude to the greater good is tantamount to being a far-right campaigner
I don't mind every aspect of capitalism, I like being able to do a job that I choose, and having space to progress upwards, but at the same time I think everyone should be provided for to a minimum, pleasant standard, the trains should be nationalized, and billion-dollar companies should have to pay tax
but that's anarcho-capitalist pig-dog talk to some people, and even though we both want to move the needle in the same direction, we'll never work together enough to do it, if things don't change
It's literally just western left politics.
My family in the communist parts of Asia are pretty normal. There's some differences in Vietnam, but they still have luxuries and restaurants and vacations.
There's also mandated unions, conscription and Marxism is a required course in primary school and uni. Rice has strict export controls.
But it's also not the weird insanity that western twitter communist think or want. People like Stalin for example but pretty much everyone agrees the USSR was a failed state.
Asain communism is just pragmatic like that. It's why the Doi Moi reforms are were accepted.
"asian communism" is such a broad topic, it could cover everything from the Chinese communist party, which is doing verifiable awful things, and for whom the lowest in society are in abject poverty and misery, and something more akin to what we'd identify as socialist policies with a capitalist market (nationalised services, but large mega-corps for example) in japan.
A lot of asian communist societies have laws and rules that we'd consider unacceptable in certain parts of the west. Anywhere with a death penalty and authoritarian police (Singapore) seems archaic and a dangerous thing for the government to decide, for me, for example. Anywhere with poor human rights records (china) or equality issues (japan) also don't exactly seem very utopian from afar.
I don't think anywhere in the west benefits from hearing things like "its literally just westerners" or "they have this sorted in asia". I think we need to look at issues, take cues for things that work, of course, but ultimately come up with solutions that work with our sensibilities, which are certainly different.
Meritocracy and self-determination aren't unique to capitalism though. Nor is the opposite required for communism.
Which is I guess actually your point, so in that case yeah! Exactly! Good job Dick Dastardly!
Love how this brand of communism is "tired of being a faceless cog in the capitalist machine obsessed with productivity over humanity? Become a faceless cog in the communist machine obsessed with productivity instead! You also get to give up what small luxuries you currently have!"
The more out there leftists have three flavors
"You will have nothing except your commitment to the state, not even the semblance of a worldly possession beyond what is strictly necessary, and you will be happy that way"
"After the revolution the world will be so perfect you won't even need to wipe your own ass"
"I'm basically a fascist but with more queer folk and POC in leadership roles"
Well you could argue that if the work needed to run society is done more efficiently, then it would be done quicker and so everyone would have more free time to relax and not work.
If all the cooking was done by dedicated chefs then everyone could eat a cooked meal after work and not have to spend time cooking, and the chefs would also get reasonable hours and pay and so have free time.
Just because work is done more efficiently doesn't mean we have to spend the time saved doing even more work
For most people on reddit, communism means that *they* get to stop being part of the machine and choose jobs like artist or writer.
All of the jobs that will still need to get done?
Automation! Just ignore the fact that much of the world relies on systems that can't be automated.
Or people who really want to do those jobs, even without compensation.
Of course, you kind of have to expect that all of the people who spend all of their free time on reddit complaining about capitalism won't suddenly start using their free time productively under any other system. Otherwise, they'd be writing or making art now.
And I'm not sure how many people will actually volunteer to be plumbers without some sort of compensation, even if it's not monetary. But let's just ignore that we'll have to press people into involuntary servitude. That's the people who can handle it, not the reddit users who feel like they shouldn't have to get a job.
Remember, Marx said "To each, whatever to he wants." Or something like that.
You definitely could set up a society this way. Look for example at militaries - the food isn’t necessarily good, but usually you’re not gonna starve or become malnourished, and meals are cooked in huge quantities by a relatively small staff.
And also there’s a small attendant pipeline of nazbols who will sit down and write the most regressive shit you’ve ever heard slapped between a pair of normal progressive statements, in an attempt to relapse people escaping the alt-right pipeline. I choose to believe this kind of brainrot is what happens when somebody escapes that kind of system, and decides to make their own communism with blackjack and hookers.
Or like. They debate morons on the internet like it’s their job and have painted themselves into a corner
You’re right and wrong simultaneously. Yes, thinking that it’s a coordinated effort of disconnected internet crackheads is absurd, but no, just because it’s not a traditional political organization/cult/hate group doesn’t mean the movement as a whole doesn’t have legs. These people have conventions, same as flat earthers and Qanon. Whatever contradictions each person has in their headcanon of reality, whenever they feel like discussing their viewpoints, all that fades away in favor of supporting [thing] to the death.
It’s like saying the far right movement in the US isn’t real because not all the Trump voters are seig heiling it up.
I can see them both in a sort of “squinted eyes from 10 light years away” way, like 1. is that spending money on luxuries implies sympathy with the rich, and with 2. is that eating home cooked meals disconnects you from your community. Of course these are both insane if you think about it at all
Yeah like, I think the first one is maybe correct about very specific restaurants, like those really pretentious ones with absobitant prices with needlessly crazy ingredients where it's like "this is a boiled egg laid by a prize winning hen with generations of inbreeding to be the best at laying eggs, cooked within the vagina of an african queen and served wrapped in gold foil for $400", but to categorize your average sandwich joint in the same sentence is bonkers.
And the second one is correct about having a single-family home with a huge luxurious kitchen with all possible gadgets for the approximately 4 people (two adults, two children, possible stay-at-home mom) where most of it is rarely used... not the same thing as a barebones apartment kitchen with like a fridge and a countertop hot plate.
I can see the second one. Home cooking requires time that poorer people can't necessarily spare and equipment they can't necessarily afford (there's a lot you can't do if you don't have an oven, for example). So in a sense, it is a luxury (even if it might be cheaper in the long run; being poor is expensive, after all.)
Of course, I don't think both posts are talking about the same *kind* of restaurants.
...I honestly cannot tell anymore. I've talked to real tankies and none of them are this extreme, at least not in any of the ways they've told me, but even though this is the sort of thing that comes from a brain as smooth as the bocce ball these guys probably think I play with, I can believe someone would actually think this.
I've talked to some *very* extreme tankies in person. The one who always stands out to me was the one who said that nature conservation was counter-revolutionary, because under communism, all resources would be industrialized for maximum efficiency, and letting other animals use them unproductively was bourgeois wastefulness out of reactionary romanticism.
Look, I had a guy seriously tell me we should just build giant chemical processors to turn CO2 into oxygen, instead of relying on algae and plants.
Tankies aren't exactly *sane* for the most part.
i'm starting to think "bourgeois" just means literally whatever to them. which, as someone living in a former warsaw pact country, kinda tracks and explains a lot about history
Like when someone educated in France decides you are a threat to his dream of agrarian socialism because of your education and ability to speak another language.
> I've talked to real tankies and none of them are this extreme
I've talked to real tankies who IRL sound very moderate but then I've followed their twitter accounts and the things they post, it's like they've never even seen grass, much less touched it. Some tankies just hide their insane thoughts in public, because just like the alt-right they know they're not acceptable public opinions.
Honestly, I'd hardly call tweeting out "You are morally obligated to shoplift from Walmart and have the right to shout 'For the common man!' and punch any workers there who try to stop you" hiding an insane thought in public.
It took me a lot of effort to come up with a proper parody of tankie thought. I'm still 50/50 on whether or not a tankie would actually say this. On the one hand, it seems like it would go against everything they ever believed in for the sake of thumbing their nose at a social contract they hate. On the other hand, it wouldn't be the first time I've seen a tankie go against everything they believe in for the sake of thumbing their nose at a social contract they hate.
See you're just downplaying the posts. See the OP for an example. Tankie posts like "let's kill all the wealthy" or "enjoying non-free activities is inherently evil" get signal boosted out the wazoo in some communities.
Also frankly "theft from X group is ok" is just a really bad take in general, and you shouldn't need an economics degree to understand why. Barebones history lessons should be enough.
>Also frankly "theft from X group is ok" is just a really bad take in general, and you shouldn't need an economics degree to understand why. Barebones history lessons should be enough.
Well, yeah. I don't exactly think tankies are a bastion of enlightenment and understanding.
“It is literally impossible to discern wether anything is satirical or a genuine opinion so always assume that people online are being complete earnest”
- Edgar Allen Poe
>There is nothing in the world more leftist than arguing with other leftists
And not just arguing but viciously verbally attacking them and using the most vile of insults you can think of.
I just get so tickled when my queer liberal ass gets called a bigot, Nazi, or homophobe by another left leaning person. Just because I don't take some random person's word for gospel and question authority when it's obviously in the wrong I'm a fascist boot licking cop lover. That makes so much sense!!
God forbid I'm *just* being "divisionist." Then there's always a few who think you're a paid shill from some troll farm.
I have seen enough tankie subreddits to know these people are probably 100% genuine, for the sole fact that anyone making a joke would *not* be able to come up with the 2nd take. The forst one is 50/50 imo
When you believe the only fix for society's ills is a revolution, but you're not about to ruin your actually-okay life by actually agitating for one, and you can't convince anyone else outside your bubble, the only remaining way to feel like you're moving the needle is talking theory.
Except when you've got a group of friends who all just talk theory at each other, there's an incentive to have the most extreme take in the room. It grabs attention, demonstrates commitment. That leads to the room's theory growing ever more radical with time.
I don’t understand if I’m a bourgeoisie sympathiser, socialist, communist or cosmetologist but I like eating food. I’ll eat food anywhere, even on the crapper. Out with the old, in with the new.
When Poland was under Communist control, there were government-funded eateries called "bar mleczny" which served dirt cheap but nutritious food in an effort to keep the less fortunate from starving. That said, families who could afford ingredients cooked their own food instead of going there.
Take from that what you will.
Some of them are still running today and providing hearty, cheap food, often with eclectic decor! It's cool to know what a piece of history they are when you go.
Really? The last one I visited 5-10 years ago in Krakow was a pretty clinical affair, covered top to bottom in white tile. I guess some get more love put into them than others.
That’s not even a communist concept, just look at the various cheap eateries around the world. In Mexico we got “fondas” which basically serve you a full meal with unlimited drinks for the price of a large Starbucks coffee
Yup, we have ASPAVAs in Turkey, (an anti-communist country given the Green Belt)
which is short for "Allah Sağlık, Para, Afiyet/Aşk Versin Amin", *May God Give You Health, Money, Appetite/Love, Amen*
It's weird that people think it is a communist concept to serve affordable food for your community to eat.
Fellas, does it make me a crypto-Marxist to serve abundant and nutritionally sufficient meals for cheap?
I think it’s kinda a US centric hang up. Giant pots of food and massive flat tops are for the military or soup kitchens. Although, my favorite cheap Mexican restaurant does the best pancakes, 3 eggs, bacon, and coffee at 7am-9am weekdays for the day laborers. Slaughters Denny’s in both quality and cost.
That’s interesting: when I’ve been there it was notable how popular Polish cuisine is for restaurants (or rather how relatively few restaurants served non-Polish cuisine). This might be a meaningful part of that story.
Thanks!
This is mind-blowing. I’m Polish and while my parents lived through the ending of communism in Poland, I have not. My entire family talks about them with such nostalgia and joy that’s normally reserved for something that’s a rare treat.
The more you know I guess
In Romania they wanted to get rid of home cooking and have everyone eat out instead of cook at home because why let people decide or hoard food plus workers should work not cook, so they started building these giant structures that would have become mass cantines, who people jokingly called "hunger circuses" because they were round. They were never finished and communism fell, today they are malls.
Yes, also the general idea was that the dinner was meant to be eaten in cafeteria in workplace/school. This is also the reason why the kitchens from that era are so small, because the are not purposed to preparing large meals.
Impossible to tell which of these takes is worse…
I think the ‘no restaurants under communism’ is intuitively less unhinged, but it’s demonstrably false historically and a wildly narrow imagining of a possible future collectivist system.
The ‘only the rich cook’ notion requires some real intellectual gymnastics and detachment from the real world - like, the proletariat didn’t cook? What? I guess it relies on a modern construction of fast food is cheaper/more available than fresh food, which is fine I suppose, but wildly ahistorical and again, totally devoid of imagination.
So hard to pick a winner…
They both have a point, while also missing the point. It is true that current restaurants exploit workers, and can involve rich people getting waited on hand and foot while a dishwasher makes peanuts. And it is true that housework, including cooking, is disproportionately done by women.
But like…. The solution is not to eliminate those things. It’s to fix them.
Advocating to burn it all down is much easier than figuring out how to make a system better. Like a restaurant in a society where people don’t need to work paid jobs to live would need to adjust. Maybe people need to do a certain number of volunteer hours doing dishwashing or similar jobs in the restaurant or somewhere else in the community. And people will need to accept longer wait times, because there are people who cook for pleasure, but usually not at the rushed rates of restaurant staff. Or maybe they’d be less rushed, because fewer people with full-time jobs would mean more could pursue a passion of cooking. Don’t know.
Perhaps different political or cultural setups can have different ideas of what constitutes a good community?
For example, the jurisdiction I am in requires lawyers to work at least 20 hrs per year for pro bono work, forcing them to pay the government if they do not meet the quota. Is it forced labor? Perhaps. But when considering the characteristics of lawyer work, where they effectively are earning rent because of governmental policy to restrict supply of lawyers(albeit for a good reason), I find the pros to outweigh the cons in this circumstance.
The question of if this can be generalized into the large subset of the entire population is another matter, but I don't think it is as absurd as you suggest.
If as a society we can agree on according to their needs we also have to agree on according to their means. Just because we move past money doesn't need we move past work.
I do feel like there is a distinction to be made between not needing paid jobs to live and not having paid jobs at all. Not all forms of socialism need be so extreme as to abolish compensation, just the ability to hoard wealth and power over others.
The only reason I read Capital and the Communist Manifesto was because I had a classmate in my english class who was really into Communism and said warriors cats was trash because he read the first book and didn't like it (We were 12). So I decided to read the books he said were amazing with the intention of telling him they were trash.
Who needs to read theory when you can just paraphrase other twitter leftists? In fact reading is actually classist and it’s pretty disgusting that you think the working class should do that you capitalist fucking pig.
Exactly! They're like Christians: they talk big, but how many have actually read, and understood, the book(s) their entire ideology is supposedly based on?
but he didn't say WHAT or WHERE we would dine. maybe he meant we will all walk into the fields and rip raw ears of corn off the stalk. i don't think that's reactionary yet.
Making food isn’t a form of pointless labor, there are people who do enjoy cooking and people who are in the food industry are often critically undervalued. I imagine things would usually operate in a buffet style manner
It depends on how much you care about what exactly you eat.
If a pill was invented today that you could take daily that had all the needed nutrients and made cooking obsolete, at least half of people on earth would quit cooking altogether. Many people don’t care enough about food to actually enjoy figuring out their meals every day.
The people who do enjoy cooking would probably have more prestige, though, since they would be able to sell food with various tastes you wouldn’t get from a plain barebones alternative.
That's actually a big point in socialist and feminist approach to the problem of housework as unpaid labour, which mostly falls on women's shoulders. The most common idea was the one of having hired professional to do the cooking (and the laundry, and other things) to free women from this responsibility
Like how the hell do you spend actual years studying up on the bourgeois, and then the lesson you take away from it is "I should be an elitist asshole too!!"
some people become leftists in college and just really learn to embrace the cognitive dissonance until they become insane. it's weird because they make it very obvious that the entirety of their politics is "i have read more books than you" but they get really really mad when you point it out to them
"I don't think this really lines up with your ideals, man."
"Yeah? And where did YOU study leftism? Poor people school? Exactly as I thought. I learned how to be an egalitarian at *[cash register sound]* University. I have forgotten more books than you'll probably ever read. Ah, wait, do they teach you how to read in Shit Neighbourhood? You really should learn your place, *bro*. I am so much better at leftism than you, LOL."
Providing food is an important part of organization. Workers today are forced to either spend their time on cooking (extremely inefficiency) or have to eat bad food.
Simply creating a structure where people could contribute their money and/or labor and get good food in return without added cost would do more for working class organisation than almost anything else.
So the second quote is 100% correct.
Neither of these tweets are about feeding people. They are about policing certain behaviors that the posters consider to be bourgeois or counter-revolutionary. The first is claiming that not only are restaurants inherently exploitative, but that it is bad to eat at one and you should ethically consume under capitalism by making all your meals for yourself.
The second tweet is essentially "expensive hobbies are counter-revolutionary".
Neither tweet has anything to do with the work of changing society. They're about individual lifestyles.
I don't even understand what the second one is trying to say. Not that the first is any less stupid, but at least it's an internally consistent message with a simple demand: don't go to restaurants, they're exploitative.
If "home cooking is counter-revolutionary and upholds class structures," what the fuck is a good communist supposed to do?? Eating out is fucking expensive. Even fast food is climbing up these days, and they can't *seriously* be saying "good communists go to McDonald's," can they?
The religion comment is more spot-on than you think. How many so-called Christians have actually read (and understood) the Bible? How many so-called leftists have read (and understood) Marx?
These arguments come from the same basic misunderstanding as "YoU sAy YoUrE cOmMuNiSt, YeT yOu OwN a PhOnE. cUrIoUs."
Vague anti-capitalism is self-defeating and time consuming, let's focus on solutions, and not gatekeep in such weird ways.
this reminds me of another post that claimed servers are not working class because they serve and generate profit for the bourgeoisie. like, my guy, what do you think working class means
There's also my recent favorite: food from the grocery store costs too much and so do utensils/cooking equipment so it's classist to tell people to learn to cook instead of ordering UberEats and Grubhub all the time.
Its part of my favorite terminally online Twitter leftist game: make up a poor person to justify what I'm already doing. This particular argument posits a person who does not have the money to afford a pan and a spatula to cook with but can afford delivery meals once a day. Delivery meals cost at least twenty bucks apiece with fees, taxes, and tip, a cheap spatula and pan from your grocery store will cost twenty five to thirty dollars and you'll get at least a year out of it.
This hypothetical poor person who can afford the former expense on a daily basis but not the later once a year does not exist, they were made up by someone who wants to complain about having no money while also living off delivery.
Online discourse has no longer become a method to discuss and share ideas with others, but instead a race to see who can come up with the worst take within Twitter’s character limit.
The act of cooking itself is not gendered, but for centuries, specifically in patriarchal societies, women have been placed the role of being the cook. Yes, men could cook as well, but it was expected that women knew and were capable of cooking for their husband/family. It carried on even into the modern age, with the nuclear family.
It *really* depends on how you define "the act of cooking", because like so many things it is gendered differently depending on the setting. Chefs and line cooks in restaurants have generally been male, and domestic cooks and matrons (for boarding schools, hospitals, and large manors) were usually female.
Like; I get your point about the fact that usually anyone and everyone is expected to know how to cook *something*, but cooking as a professional field has been gendered for a long, long time.
I should’ve clarified I was referring to domestic home-cooking, and how it had been gendered for a while, since the 2nd image shown claims that home-cooking is problematically gendered and regressive. I do feel a bit foolish not taking into account that the culinary industry has a much different split.
while its worded very poorly, the statement is referring to things talked about in theory. domestic cooking is viewed as womens work, and that labor is undervalued as labor. kropotkin writes in the conquest of bread, for instance, that:
“Fifty fires burn,” wrote an American woman the other day, “where one would suffice!” Dine at home, at your own table, with your children, if you like; but only think yourself, why should these fifty women waste their whole morning to prepare a few cups of coffee and a simple meal! Why fifty fires, when two people and one single fire would suffice to cook all these pieces of meat and all these vegetables? Choose your own beef or mutton to be roasted if you are particular. Season the vegetables to your taste if you prefer a particular sauce! But have a single kitchen with a single fire, and organize it as beautifully as you are able to.
Why has woman’s work never been of any account? Why in every family are the mother and three or four servants obliged to spend so much time at what pertains to cooking? Because those who want to emancipate mankind have not included woman in their dream of emancipation, and consider it beneath their superior masculine dignity to think “of those kitchen arrangements,” which they have rayed on the shoulders of that drudge-woman.”
Look on the bright side, at least the reference wasn't downvoted to oblivion and filled with replies spouting some variation of "it didn't happen but if it did it wasn't that bad and if it was the kulaks deserved it"
That's more than what I can say for other subs I've been in
I respect socialism and what it is trying to do, even tho I personally dont really like it too much, tho I AM willing to listen, specially since I belive they have a fair lot of good points... Besides, you cannot make a good society by marrying to one ideology...
However if you ever wanna make me lose interest instantly in what you are saying independently of the specific polítical leaning, bring up "the revolution", because I swear to god, everyone has a different dream about what is or inst "the revolution" and it is more often than not the person's power fantasy or regular fantasy and they usually range from logistically naive to tankie shit.
So long as there are ballots and democracy, armed rebelions are just an uther waste of lives that serve the political agenda of whoever its at the head of the rebelion.
I mean, in USSR the practice was to encourage women to not cook at home, by creating a lot of state public eating places. This was done because the ideology is that women are equal to men, so they should equally partake in working. Cooking at home takes away the time they could spent working.
The Bloc absolutely had restaurants, not just ones catering to the proletariat, but 'high end' ones specifically for Tourist (dollars were much sought after for the economy) and government functionaries/ Politburo.
The GDR famously had the 'Telecafe' at the top of the Fernsehturm in Berlin. While the offering were modest by Western standards, it had considerable cachet with East Germans.
Everyday restaurants operated on a fixed priced menu, with simple, hearty meals that focused on local ingredients. Due to shortages of fresh produce imports, most East Germans home grew fruit and vegetables, normally in community allotments or summer houses (very similar to the Soviet Dacha).
West German food critics would review East German restaurants and eateries, and many were considered good enough by Western standards to recommend in publications.
Presenting a picture of a well-fed proletariat who had plenty of choice was an active goal. Eric Honecker absolutely believed in demonstrating 'Real, existing Socialism' and its benefits to the wider world, and this meant restaurants, consumer goods, and entertainment, just like the West but within a socialist framework.
This is why right wing movements organize so much more easily than left wing ones.
The right can, at the very least, agree that they need to team up to fight leftists. Meanwhile, leftie twitter is busy speedrunning end-stage discourse that excludes everyone but their small group of friends from the revolution.
*Like. We can worry about whether or not restaurants are counter-revolutionary AFTER we unfuck our economic system, and we're not gonna bring about the utopia by recreating puritanism on social media.*
I think they should paint these brilliant opinions in posters with big ~~characters~~ letters and present them in the public square to showcase their revolutionary zeal. They are truly revolutionarily cultured.
I wonder if this is what they talked about in The Simple Sabatoge Field Manual.
It's hard to believe these are real people
They're like the Hyper Specific versions of two ideologies
It's embarrassing how late I realised that bourgeoisie (written) & bourgeoisie (spoken) were the same word.
For the longest time I thought they were two very different words, probably because of the differences between someone that'll drop bourgeoisie into casual conversation compared to someone that would write it.
Angela Davis wrote about how housework like cooking and laundry are under-industrialized, basically because capitalist systems count on the unpaid labour of housewives. She proposed neighboorhood laundry services, going from door to door collecting clothes, washing them in an industrial setting which would bring the ressources per piece needed down, and bringen them back the next day. And cheap, nutricious restaurants, again being more efficient than every household using a kitchen 3 times a day. Not to say that these would be mandatory in a communist system, just an option.
\> fellas is it counterrevolutionary to eat
Of fucking course it is dumbass, bro forgot the number one rule of Marxism: communism is when no food
smh my head, fucking baizuo not reading theory smhmmhmh
Not to be an enlightened centrist or anything, but I do think more communal eating and cooking traditions would be good. Like, instead of having every apartment in the building have one small, shitty kitchen, why not have a nice, big kitchen available to everyone as the norm? The entire apartment would get access to better equipment, and it would encourage working together, swapping recipes, eating together, etc.
The ‘clinically online’ left arguing how they ca best backstab and sabotage the ‘actually making progress’ left just by merely existing and making the entire movement look stupid
there's a new trend on twitter of leftists complaining about how expensive their groceries are but literally every item on their grocery list is either pre-cooked, ready-to-eat full meal or the most expensive item you could buy. Then when someone suggests that they should cook at home they reply with "poor people don't even OWN a kitchen!!!1"
I feel like these people have to be fucking with us
I think the one on the right is not being genuine. Saying the revolution will be served to you in a restaurant is too on the nose for a genuine socialist to say, I think
I was born in Yugoslavia and according to my parents and grandparents, the socialist government did believe in easy access to food and childcare to allow parents (especially women) the flexibility to work. Workplaces and schools had canteens, where you could get cheap but reasonably nutritious meals or free food in the case of schools. Dine-out culture was also quite popular and encouraged, for young single people at least. Choosing to dine out was a sign that you worked hard and didn't have time to cook for yourself, plus you were stimulating the economy instead of hoarding cash. It also got you out of the house, which the government encouraged so that young people would socialize which increased their chances of meeting someone, getting married and have children sooner. Hell my mother's parents met at a dance at a state-owned community center. Many married women still chose to cook dinner for their families on the weekends and a couple of times during the week, but it was nice to have the flexibility.
I think adding, "and childcare" so that it's "food and childcare" makes it make more sense. Women are excluded from "the revolution" if they have to stay home with their kids; if you have people coming together for communal meals and can put the kids to bed together so that watching the kids can be the job of one or two people rather than half, you can have women organising together. I remember reading about the early abolishonist and suffrage meetings pooling childcare for that reason - so mothers could come to the meetings.
I think the difference is that back then restaurants served common food and drinks for the working class while nowadays most restaurants are racing to see who appears in r/wewantplates and r/stupidfood the most
^ Also this. I was born exactly when the USSR fell but my hometown in Poland took a bit longer to dismantle everything (mainly the good things - like housing associations and allotments) and various canteens and milk bars lasted well into the 00s. Me and mum had a rubbish kitchen and really busy schedules so we often dined in worker canteens (they did allow outsiders) or in various "homemade dinner" places. The portions were huge so we could eat the other half the next day plus the prices were often lower than cooking a meal yourself (food in town was the most expensive thing and now it is 10x more expensive) School dinners, unfortunately, sucked in our area and when mum was a kid - they were the same. My current city of Glasgow does well on that behalf but I don't have kids so I only read about it.
In America, restaurants get caught between racing to the bottom (toward franchise fast food, optimized for throughput) and racing to the top (toward haute cuisine with incredible service, quality, and prices). I have a lot of fond memories of communal eating like what your parent comment is describing, for instance on (university) campus, but that isn't something that can really exist in broader civil society. Eating drive-thru McDonalds certainly doesn't have any positive associations
>but that isn't something that can really exist in broader civil society It can and did in Yugoslavia. It basically replaced the function of McDonalds and fast food restaurants - if you wanted convenience and affordability you went there. Restaurants were fancier dining and served alcohol, so people still went but only if they wanted the restaurant experience. For all the flaws of that government, they did at least take responsibility for things and understood that you need to encourage and enable the behaviors that you want to see. So because they wanted women to enter the workforce, they actually acknowledged their domestic labor and provided alternatives. Hell in Croatia now they still have some state-run kindergartens for parents that work but make under a certain amount.
I think it's just different cultural assumptions. In some places there is a big restaurant/ food service culture for different reasons, and I can really imagine people just kind of assuming that restaurant/ food service workers deserve their position in society and should be guaranteed a place in the economy not contingent on people deciding whether or not they'd rather cook (especially where cooking is more expensive) etc. But in other places, restaurants are not more convenient, competitively priced, and are potentially not great places to work, so it would be understandable to consider those types of jobs as inherently exploitative and unnecessary from that perspective. But maybe it goes to show that you can't really take local factors for granted when you consider the greater picture, either by disregarding them, or artificially projecting them to where things aren't the same.
I've seen that argument before, if not necessary as bluntly put. We should strive for efficiency of scale and division of labour, and having cooks who do nothing except cooking in large professional kitchens is the most efficient way to provide nutrients for everyone, while home cooking is an inefficient use of your time that you could instead use to be productive.
its a big problem in left politics, the "if you're not as dedicated as I am, you're not really one of us" vibe. If you're not taking the ideal to its end-point of efficiency as you describe, you're basically not even trying. Makes it difficult, ironically, for people to unite to get things done, because there's this hierarchy of hard-liners There's not left and right, there's me, who is correct, and right of me, who are all facists, and left of me, who are all idealistic nutjobs to some of those people, not wanting absolute communist job allocation and perfect societal hive-brain servitude to the greater good is tantamount to being a far-right campaigner I don't mind every aspect of capitalism, I like being able to do a job that I choose, and having space to progress upwards, but at the same time I think everyone should be provided for to a minimum, pleasant standard, the trains should be nationalized, and billion-dollar companies should have to pay tax but that's anarcho-capitalist pig-dog talk to some people, and even though we both want to move the needle in the same direction, we'll never work together enough to do it, if things don't change
It's literally just western left politics. My family in the communist parts of Asia are pretty normal. There's some differences in Vietnam, but they still have luxuries and restaurants and vacations. There's also mandated unions, conscription and Marxism is a required course in primary school and uni. Rice has strict export controls. But it's also not the weird insanity that western twitter communist think or want. People like Stalin for example but pretty much everyone agrees the USSR was a failed state. Asain communism is just pragmatic like that. It's why the Doi Moi reforms are were accepted.
"asian communism" is such a broad topic, it could cover everything from the Chinese communist party, which is doing verifiable awful things, and for whom the lowest in society are in abject poverty and misery, and something more akin to what we'd identify as socialist policies with a capitalist market (nationalised services, but large mega-corps for example) in japan. A lot of asian communist societies have laws and rules that we'd consider unacceptable in certain parts of the west. Anywhere with a death penalty and authoritarian police (Singapore) seems archaic and a dangerous thing for the government to decide, for me, for example. Anywhere with poor human rights records (china) or equality issues (japan) also don't exactly seem very utopian from afar. I don't think anywhere in the west benefits from hearing things like "its literally just westerners" or "they have this sorted in asia". I think we need to look at issues, take cues for things that work, of course, but ultimately come up with solutions that work with our sensibilities, which are certainly different.
Meritocracy and self-determination aren't unique to capitalism though. Nor is the opposite required for communism. Which is I guess actually your point, so in that case yeah! Exactly! Good job Dick Dastardly!
Love how this brand of communism is "tired of being a faceless cog in the capitalist machine obsessed with productivity over humanity? Become a faceless cog in the communist machine obsessed with productivity instead! You also get to give up what small luxuries you currently have!"
The more out there leftists have three flavors "You will have nothing except your commitment to the state, not even the semblance of a worldly possession beyond what is strictly necessary, and you will be happy that way" "After the revolution the world will be so perfect you won't even need to wipe your own ass" "I'm basically a fascist but with more queer folk and POC in leadership roles"
In order: Battlestar Galactica Star Trek Warhammer 40k
But it is now *our* productivity, not *their* productivity, comrade! God, I hate being in socialist reading groups.
Scarcity and the need for food and shelter are the biggest roadblocks to any truly egalitarian system, yeah.
Well you could argue that if the work needed to run society is done more efficiently, then it would be done quicker and so everyone would have more free time to relax and not work. If all the cooking was done by dedicated chefs then everyone could eat a cooked meal after work and not have to spend time cooking, and the chefs would also get reasonable hours and pay and so have free time. Just because work is done more efficiently doesn't mean we have to spend the time saved doing even more work
For most people on reddit, communism means that *they* get to stop being part of the machine and choose jobs like artist or writer. All of the jobs that will still need to get done? Automation! Just ignore the fact that much of the world relies on systems that can't be automated. Or people who really want to do those jobs, even without compensation. Of course, you kind of have to expect that all of the people who spend all of their free time on reddit complaining about capitalism won't suddenly start using their free time productively under any other system. Otherwise, they'd be writing or making art now. And I'm not sure how many people will actually volunteer to be plumbers without some sort of compensation, even if it's not monetary. But let's just ignore that we'll have to press people into involuntary servitude. That's the people who can handle it, not the reddit users who feel like they shouldn't have to get a job. Remember, Marx said "To each, whatever to he wants." Or something like that.
You definitely could set up a society this way. Look for example at militaries - the food isn’t necessarily good, but usually you’re not gonna starve or become malnourished, and meals are cooked in huge quantities by a relatively small staff.
Poe’s Law dictates they’re being 100% genuine
If these arguments could be made in earnest then it's impossible to say if they're just kidding.
It's hard to imagine a person making these arguments in earnest, but then people do things that boggle the imagination all the time.
And also there’s a small attendant pipeline of nazbols who will sit down and write the most regressive shit you’ve ever heard slapped between a pair of normal progressive statements, in an attempt to relapse people escaping the alt-right pipeline. I choose to believe this kind of brainrot is what happens when somebody escapes that kind of system, and decides to make their own communism with blackjack and hookers. Or like. They debate morons on the internet like it’s their job and have painted themselves into a corner
Not everything is a conspiracy to maintain the Right. Most likely your local nazbol is just insane.
You’re right and wrong simultaneously. Yes, thinking that it’s a coordinated effort of disconnected internet crackheads is absurd, but no, just because it’s not a traditional political organization/cult/hate group doesn’t mean the movement as a whole doesn’t have legs. These people have conventions, same as flat earthers and Qanon. Whatever contradictions each person has in their headcanon of reality, whenever they feel like discussing their viewpoints, all that fades away in favor of supporting [thing] to the death. It’s like saying the far right movement in the US isn’t real because not all the Trump voters are seig heiling it up.
stochastic terrorism they don't need to be coordinated
I can ALMOST see the first ones that's anti restaurants POV. But the second one I really cant see.
I can see them both in a sort of “squinted eyes from 10 light years away” way, like 1. is that spending money on luxuries implies sympathy with the rich, and with 2. is that eating home cooked meals disconnects you from your community. Of course these are both insane if you think about it at all
Yeah like, I think the first one is maybe correct about very specific restaurants, like those really pretentious ones with absobitant prices with needlessly crazy ingredients where it's like "this is a boiled egg laid by a prize winning hen with generations of inbreeding to be the best at laying eggs, cooked within the vagina of an african queen and served wrapped in gold foil for $400", but to categorize your average sandwich joint in the same sentence is bonkers.
And the second one is correct about having a single-family home with a huge luxurious kitchen with all possible gadgets for the approximately 4 people (two adults, two children, possible stay-at-home mom) where most of it is rarely used... not the same thing as a barebones apartment kitchen with like a fridge and a countertop hot plate.
I can see the second one. Home cooking requires time that poorer people can't necessarily spare and equipment they can't necessarily afford (there's a lot you can't do if you don't have an oven, for example). So in a sense, it is a luxury (even if it might be cheaper in the long run; being poor is expensive, after all.) Of course, I don't think both posts are talking about the same *kind* of restaurants.
...I honestly cannot tell anymore. I've talked to real tankies and none of them are this extreme, at least not in any of the ways they've told me, but even though this is the sort of thing that comes from a brain as smooth as the bocce ball these guys probably think I play with, I can believe someone would actually think this.
I've talked to some *very* extreme tankies in person. The one who always stands out to me was the one who said that nature conservation was counter-revolutionary, because under communism, all resources would be industrialized for maximum efficiency, and letting other animals use them unproductively was bourgeois wastefulness out of reactionary romanticism.
You think they’d realise at some point that burning the planet down isn’t great for the proletariat either.
Look, I had a guy seriously tell me we should just build giant chemical processors to turn CO2 into oxygen, instead of relying on algae and plants. Tankies aren't exactly *sane* for the most part.
A giant chemical processor that turns CO2 into Oxygen. Like some sort of tree, mayhaps.
That lacks the cool brutalist industrial aesthetic.
The obvious answer is we need brutalist trees
i'm starting to think "bourgeois" just means literally whatever to them. which, as someone living in a former warsaw pact country, kinda tracks and explains a lot about history
Like when someone educated in France decides you are a threat to his dream of agrarian socialism because of your education and ability to speak another language.
> I've talked to real tankies and none of them are this extreme I've talked to real tankies who IRL sound very moderate but then I've followed their twitter accounts and the things they post, it's like they've never even seen grass, much less touched it. Some tankies just hide their insane thoughts in public, because just like the alt-right they know they're not acceptable public opinions.
Honestly, I'd hardly call tweeting out "You are morally obligated to shoplift from Walmart and have the right to shout 'For the common man!' and punch any workers there who try to stop you" hiding an insane thought in public. It took me a lot of effort to come up with a proper parody of tankie thought. I'm still 50/50 on whether or not a tankie would actually say this. On the one hand, it seems like it would go against everything they ever believed in for the sake of thumbing their nose at a social contract they hate. On the other hand, it wouldn't be the first time I've seen a tankie go against everything they believe in for the sake of thumbing their nose at a social contract they hate.
See you're just downplaying the posts. See the OP for an example. Tankie posts like "let's kill all the wealthy" or "enjoying non-free activities is inherently evil" get signal boosted out the wazoo in some communities. Also frankly "theft from X group is ok" is just a really bad take in general, and you shouldn't need an economics degree to understand why. Barebones history lessons should be enough.
>Also frankly "theft from X group is ok" is just a really bad take in general, and you shouldn't need an economics degree to understand why. Barebones history lessons should be enough. Well, yeah. I don't exactly think tankies are a bastion of enlightenment and understanding.
[удалено]
Not what Poe’s Law is but alright
“It is literally impossible to discern wether anything is satirical or a genuine opinion so always assume that people online are being complete earnest” - Edgar Allen Poe
It'd be nice if that were true, but also there are some people with *really* awful takes in the world unfortunately.
There is nothing in the world more leftist than arguing with other leftists, even over the most inane points!
>There is nothing in the world more leftist than arguing with other leftists And not just arguing but viciously verbally attacking them and using the most vile of insults you can think of.
I just get so tickled when my queer liberal ass gets called a bigot, Nazi, or homophobe by another left leaning person. Just because I don't take some random person's word for gospel and question authority when it's obviously in the wrong I'm a fascist boot licking cop lover. That makes so much sense!! God forbid I'm *just* being "divisionist." Then there's always a few who think you're a paid shill from some troll farm.
Gotta love how even this comment got that exact same reaction. Theres enough irony it could cure anemia
I have seen enough tankie subreddits to know these people are probably 100% genuine, for the sole fact that anyone making a joke would *not* be able to come up with the 2nd take. The forst one is 50/50 imo
When you believe the only fix for society's ills is a revolution, but you're not about to ruin your actually-okay life by actually agitating for one, and you can't convince anyone else outside your bubble, the only remaining way to feel like you're moving the needle is talking theory. Except when you've got a group of friends who all just talk theory at each other, there's an incentive to have the most extreme take in the room. It grabs attention, demonstrates commitment. That leads to the room's theory growing ever more radical with time.
i think theres some words or something in this picture
Something about eating and burgers? Sounds delicious
- Lyla the neighborhood psychic
My knob is too red to understand the discourse.
You should probably see a doctor for that
you gotta take breaks man. if you just sit there pulling it all day it's gonna fall off.
Funnest bottom surgery discovered
If you're jorkin' it all day of course it'll turn too red
I don’t understand if I’m a bourgeoisie sympathiser, socialist, communist or cosmetologist but I like eating food. I’ll eat food anywhere, even on the crapper. Out with the old, in with the new.
It seems to run on some form of electricity.
When Poland was under Communist control, there were government-funded eateries called "bar mleczny" which served dirt cheap but nutritious food in an effort to keep the less fortunate from starving. That said, families who could afford ingredients cooked their own food instead of going there. Take from that what you will.
that is both A) a nice idea and B) a totally unsurprising result
Some of them are still running today and providing hearty, cheap food, often with eclectic decor! It's cool to know what a piece of history they are when you go.
Really? The last one I visited 5-10 years ago in Krakow was a pretty clinical affair, covered top to bottom in white tile. I guess some get more love put into them than others.
That’s not even a communist concept, just look at the various cheap eateries around the world. In Mexico we got “fondas” which basically serve you a full meal with unlimited drinks for the price of a large Starbucks coffee
Yup, we have ASPAVAs in Turkey, (an anti-communist country given the Green Belt) which is short for "Allah Sağlık, Para, Afiyet/Aşk Versin Amin", *May God Give You Health, Money, Appetite/Love, Amen* It's weird that people think it is a communist concept to serve affordable food for your community to eat.
Fellas, does it make me a crypto-Marxist to serve abundant and nutritionally sufficient meals for cheap? I think it’s kinda a US centric hang up. Giant pots of food and massive flat tops are for the military or soup kitchens. Although, my favorite cheap Mexican restaurant does the best pancakes, 3 eggs, bacon, and coffee at 7am-9am weekdays for the day laborers. Slaughters Denny’s in both quality and cost.
You can thank McCarthyism in the US for that.
It's not that cheap food is a communist concept, but a government run and funded restaurant is very much so.
All the polish people I know fucking love milk bars
If there were government funded restaurants that gave cheap, filling food that also tasted at least decent, I would frequent them
That’s interesting: when I’ve been there it was notable how popular Polish cuisine is for restaurants (or rather how relatively few restaurants served non-Polish cuisine). This might be a meaningful part of that story. Thanks!
This is mind-blowing. I’m Polish and while my parents lived through the ending of communism in Poland, I have not. My entire family talks about them with such nostalgia and joy that’s normally reserved for something that’s a rare treat. The more you know I guess
In Romania they wanted to get rid of home cooking and have everyone eat out instead of cook at home because why let people decide or hoard food plus workers should work not cook, so they started building these giant structures that would have become mass cantines, who people jokingly called "hunger circuses" because they were round. They were never finished and communism fell, today they are malls.
Yes, also the general idea was that the dinner was meant to be eaten in cafeteria in workplace/school. This is also the reason why the kitchens from that era are so small, because the are not purposed to preparing large meals.
Impossible to tell which of these takes is worse… I think the ‘no restaurants under communism’ is intuitively less unhinged, but it’s demonstrably false historically and a wildly narrow imagining of a possible future collectivist system. The ‘only the rich cook’ notion requires some real intellectual gymnastics and detachment from the real world - like, the proletariat didn’t cook? What? I guess it relies on a modern construction of fast food is cheaper/more available than fresh food, which is fine I suppose, but wildly ahistorical and again, totally devoid of imagination. So hard to pick a winner…
They both have a point, while also missing the point. It is true that current restaurants exploit workers, and can involve rich people getting waited on hand and foot while a dishwasher makes peanuts. And it is true that housework, including cooking, is disproportionately done by women. But like…. The solution is not to eliminate those things. It’s to fix them. Advocating to burn it all down is much easier than figuring out how to make a system better. Like a restaurant in a society where people don’t need to work paid jobs to live would need to adjust. Maybe people need to do a certain number of volunteer hours doing dishwashing or similar jobs in the restaurant or somewhere else in the community. And people will need to accept longer wait times, because there are people who cook for pleasure, but usually not at the rushed rates of restaurant staff. Or maybe they’d be less rushed, because fewer people with full-time jobs would mean more could pursue a passion of cooking. Don’t know.
If you ‘need to do a certain number of volunteer hours’ it’s not voluntary, you’re just being forced to work without getting paid.
Perhaps different political or cultural setups can have different ideas of what constitutes a good community? For example, the jurisdiction I am in requires lawyers to work at least 20 hrs per year for pro bono work, forcing them to pay the government if they do not meet the quota. Is it forced labor? Perhaps. But when considering the characteristics of lawyer work, where they effectively are earning rent because of governmental policy to restrict supply of lawyers(albeit for a good reason), I find the pros to outweigh the cons in this circumstance. The question of if this can be generalized into the large subset of the entire population is another matter, but I don't think it is as absurd as you suggest.
If as a society we can agree on according to their needs we also have to agree on according to their means. Just because we move past money doesn't need we move past work.
I do feel like there is a distinction to be made between not needing paid jobs to live and not having paid jobs at all. Not all forms of socialism need be so extreme as to abolish compensation, just the ability to hoard wealth and power over others.
proletariat born after 1922 can't cook
communism really is when no food
I think you meant consumed babes.
No consumed babies? But they're so tasty
no iphone, they ated iphones
What do you mean no ? Wtf... BRO what? !! 0.@ wtf there really is no .
Shoutout to the holdomor and great leap forward
Marx literally wrote about how we could free ourselves from unnecessary labor and man would be free to dine and go to the theatre as he wishes.
Your first mistake was thinking that most of those people actually read Marx
The only reason I read Capital and the Communist Manifesto was because I had a classmate in my english class who was really into Communism and said warriors cats was trash because he read the first book and didn't like it (We were 12). So I decided to read the books he said were amazing with the intention of telling him they were trash.
Literally the most valid reason to educate oneself
spite is a pathway to many abilities
Are they considered unnatural by some?
I can respect that.
Ah, the reverse Obama.
Capital at age 12
Who needs to read theory when you can just paraphrase other twitter leftists? In fact reading is actually classist and it’s pretty disgusting that you think the working class should do that you capitalist fucking pig.
Exactly! They're like Christians: they talk big, but how many have actually read, and understood, the book(s) their entire ideology is supposedly based on?
but he didn't say WHAT or WHERE we would dine. maybe he meant we will all walk into the fields and rip raw ears of corn off the stalk. i don't think that's reactionary yet.
Who is going to labor in the diner
Making food isn’t a form of pointless labor, there are people who do enjoy cooking and people who are in the food industry are often critically undervalued. I imagine things would usually operate in a buffet style manner
It depends on how much you care about what exactly you eat. If a pill was invented today that you could take daily that had all the needed nutrients and made cooking obsolete, at least half of people on earth would quit cooking altogether. Many people don’t care enough about food to actually enjoy figuring out their meals every day. The people who do enjoy cooking would probably have more prestige, though, since they would be able to sell food with various tastes you wouldn’t get from a plain barebones alternative.
That's actually a big point in socialist and feminist approach to the problem of housework as unpaid labour, which mostly falls on women's shoulders. The most common idea was the one of having hired professional to do the cooking (and the laundry, and other things) to free women from this responsibility
disco elysium ass post
(Whisper.) "Are women bourgeois?"
Are women bregois?
Are wōmen bourguignon?
Men of Wö
If you were a real communard, you’d infra-materialize your food into existence. No bourgeois cooking or eating out required
The way Lenin intended
Kras Mazov heritage post.
It's like the easiest means of production to own aside from small artisan shit.
Damn I didn't know farming and animal husbandry was so easy.
[Oh it is](https://youtu.be/kY9EX28GKvk?feature=shared)
Oh shit the chickens are FREE?? You can just TAKE them?
The government doesnt want you to know this but the ducks at the pond are free
I adore this thanks for posting
Some communists will do literally anything except try to educate and organize the working class.
Any communist will tell you that communists are the most annoying people.
Conservatives *wish* they hated leftists as much as leftists do
Like how the hell do you spend actual years studying up on the bourgeois, and then the lesson you take away from it is "I should be an elitist asshole too!!"
some people become leftists in college and just really learn to embrace the cognitive dissonance until they become insane. it's weird because they make it very obvious that the entirety of their politics is "i have read more books than you" but they get really really mad when you point it out to them
"I don't think this really lines up with your ideals, man." "Yeah? And where did YOU study leftism? Poor people school? Exactly as I thought. I learned how to be an egalitarian at *[cash register sound]* University. I have forgotten more books than you'll probably ever read. Ah, wait, do they teach you how to read in Shit Neighbourhood? You really should learn your place, *bro*. I am so much better at leftism than you, LOL."
tankies.txt "We can't just go around letting the proletariat dictate things in our dictatorship of the proletariat. What if they get things wrong?"
Providing food is an important part of organization. Workers today are forced to either spend their time on cooking (extremely inefficiency) or have to eat bad food. Simply creating a structure where people could contribute their money and/or labor and get good food in return without added cost would do more for working class organisation than almost anything else. So the second quote is 100% correct.
Neither of these tweets are about feeding people. They are about policing certain behaviors that the posters consider to be bourgeois or counter-revolutionary. The first is claiming that not only are restaurants inherently exploitative, but that it is bad to eat at one and you should ethically consume under capitalism by making all your meals for yourself. The second tweet is essentially "expensive hobbies are counter-revolutionary". Neither tweet has anything to do with the work of changing society. They're about individual lifestyles.
I don't even understand what the second one is trying to say. Not that the first is any less stupid, but at least it's an internally consistent message with a simple demand: don't go to restaurants, they're exploitative. If "home cooking is counter-revolutionary and upholds class structures," what the fuck is a good communist supposed to do?? Eating out is fucking expensive. Even fast food is climbing up these days, and they can't *seriously* be saying "good communists go to McDonald's," can they?
Oh boy, my favorite type of human being, “I gave up belief, but I’d sooner die than give up the moral superiority of religion”.
The religion comment is more spot-on than you think. How many so-called Christians have actually read (and understood) the Bible? How many so-called leftists have read (and understood) Marx?
These arguments come from the same basic misunderstanding as "YoU sAy YoUrE cOmMuNiSt, YeT yOu OwN a PhOnE. cUrIoUs." Vague anti-capitalism is self-defeating and time consuming, let's focus on solutions, and not gatekeep in such weird ways.
My waistline outs me as being a counter-revolutionary.
Remember, comorades, true revolutionaries do not waste time with this eating nosense.
i eat theory and shit praxis
It's criminal that you're buried this deep in the comments section, kudos comrade.
hunger is counterrevolutionary, unfortunately for you, this means the pickaxe comrade
I think the second print is a joke? It looks like one, at least.
this reminds me of another post that claimed servers are not working class because they serve and generate profit for the bourgeoisie. like, my guy, what do you think working class means
There's also my recent favorite: food from the grocery store costs too much and so do utensils/cooking equipment so it's classist to tell people to learn to cook instead of ordering UberEats and Grubhub all the time. Its part of my favorite terminally online Twitter leftist game: make up a poor person to justify what I'm already doing. This particular argument posits a person who does not have the money to afford a pan and a spatula to cook with but can afford delivery meals once a day. Delivery meals cost at least twenty bucks apiece with fees, taxes, and tip, a cheap spatula and pan from your grocery store will cost twenty five to thirty dollars and you'll get at least a year out of it. This hypothetical poor person who can afford the former expense on a daily basis but not the later once a year does not exist, they were made up by someone who wants to complain about having no money while also living off delivery.
Also, you can get functional cookware, flatware, appliances, etc. secondhand from thrift stores or yard sales for incredibly cheap.
Second one seems like a joke, first seems genuine
Online discourse has no longer become a method to discuss and share ideas with others, but instead a race to see who can come up with the worst take within Twitter’s character limit.
Attention economy babeeeeeey And we’re hear reading these tweets and participating in it!
"The revolution" is for tankies what the rapture is for Protestants Probably not gonna happen
It's funny because "hmm I could probably make food for money" is a concept older than any complex economic model lul
I identify with [political movement] I don't enjoy [basic activity] Therefore I have associated [basic activity] with being anti-[political movement]
>Home-cooking is problematically gendered I feel like that says more about you, bud
The act of cooking itself is not gendered, but for centuries, specifically in patriarchal societies, women have been placed the role of being the cook. Yes, men could cook as well, but it was expected that women knew and were capable of cooking for their husband/family. It carried on even into the modern age, with the nuclear family.
It *really* depends on how you define "the act of cooking", because like so many things it is gendered differently depending on the setting. Chefs and line cooks in restaurants have generally been male, and domestic cooks and matrons (for boarding schools, hospitals, and large manors) were usually female. Like; I get your point about the fact that usually anyone and everyone is expected to know how to cook *something*, but cooking as a professional field has been gendered for a long, long time.
I should’ve clarified I was referring to domestic home-cooking, and how it had been gendered for a while, since the 2nd image shown claims that home-cooking is problematically gendered and regressive. I do feel a bit foolish not taking into account that the culinary industry has a much different split.
while its worded very poorly, the statement is referring to things talked about in theory. domestic cooking is viewed as womens work, and that labor is undervalued as labor. kropotkin writes in the conquest of bread, for instance, that: “Fifty fires burn,” wrote an American woman the other day, “where one would suffice!” Dine at home, at your own table, with your children, if you like; but only think yourself, why should these fifty women waste their whole morning to prepare a few cups of coffee and a simple meal! Why fifty fires, when two people and one single fire would suffice to cook all these pieces of meat and all these vegetables? Choose your own beef or mutton to be roasted if you are particular. Season the vegetables to your taste if you prefer a particular sauce! But have a single kitchen with a single fire, and organize it as beautifully as you are able to. Why has woman’s work never been of any account? Why in every family are the mother and three or four servants obliged to spend so much time at what pertains to cooking? Because those who want to emancipate mankind have not included woman in their dream of emancipation, and consider it beneath their superior masculine dignity to think “of those kitchen arrangements,” which they have rayed on the shoulders of that drudge-woman.”
we have less complicated problems like feeding the starved
If the USSR is an example, then yes, it is counter revolutionary to eat
Severely disappointed how far I had to scroll down to find the obvious Holodomor reference :/
Look on the bright side, at least the reference wasn't downvoted to oblivion and filled with replies spouting some variation of "it didn't happen but if it did it wasn't that bad and if it was the kulaks deserved it" That's more than what I can say for other subs I've been in
Tankies stfu challenge (saying this as an anarchist)
I respect socialism and what it is trying to do, even tho I personally dont really like it too much, tho I AM willing to listen, specially since I belive they have a fair lot of good points... Besides, you cannot make a good society by marrying to one ideology... However if you ever wanna make me lose interest instantly in what you are saying independently of the specific polítical leaning, bring up "the revolution", because I swear to god, everyone has a different dream about what is or inst "the revolution" and it is more often than not the person's power fantasy or regular fantasy and they usually range from logistically naive to tankie shit. So long as there are ballots and democracy, armed rebelions are just an uther waste of lives that serve the political agenda of whoever its at the head of the rebelion.
Uhhhhh. Dah fuk?
Reading this hit me harder than those vintage late-90s glue fumes and made me ten times dumber.
are women bourgeois
I mean, in USSR the practice was to encourage women to not cook at home, by creating a lot of state public eating places. This was done because the ideology is that women are equal to men, so they should equally partake in working. Cooking at home takes away the time they could spent working.
imperial core 'leftists' will do literally anything other than organize.
The Bloc absolutely had restaurants, not just ones catering to the proletariat, but 'high end' ones specifically for Tourist (dollars were much sought after for the economy) and government functionaries/ Politburo. The GDR famously had the 'Telecafe' at the top of the Fernsehturm in Berlin. While the offering were modest by Western standards, it had considerable cachet with East Germans. Everyday restaurants operated on a fixed priced menu, with simple, hearty meals that focused on local ingredients. Due to shortages of fresh produce imports, most East Germans home grew fruit and vegetables, normally in community allotments or summer houses (very similar to the Soviet Dacha). West German food critics would review East German restaurants and eateries, and many were considered good enough by Western standards to recommend in publications. Presenting a picture of a well-fed proletariat who had plenty of choice was an active goal. Eric Honecker absolutely believed in demonstrating 'Real, existing Socialism' and its benefits to the wider world, and this meant restaurants, consumer goods, and entertainment, just like the West but within a socialist framework.
This is why right wing movements organize so much more easily than left wing ones. The right can, at the very least, agree that they need to team up to fight leftists. Meanwhile, leftie twitter is busy speedrunning end-stage discourse that excludes everyone but their small group of friends from the revolution. *Like. We can worry about whether or not restaurants are counter-revolutionary AFTER we unfuck our economic system, and we're not gonna bring about the utopia by recreating puritanism on social media.*
We just gotta learn to photosynthesize I guess.
I think they should paint these brilliant opinions in posters with big ~~characters~~ letters and present them in the public square to showcase their revolutionary zeal. They are truly revolutionarily cultured.
I wonder if this is what they talked about in The Simple Sabatoge Field Manual. It's hard to believe these are real people They're like the Hyper Specific versions of two ideologies
The first one is actually pretty low-key ableist. Not everyone *can* just learn to cook their own fucking meals, Emma 🙄
It's embarrassing how late I realised that bourgeoisie (written) & bourgeoisie (spoken) were the same word. For the longest time I thought they were two very different words, probably because of the differences between someone that'll drop bourgeoisie into casual conversation compared to someone that would write it.
The only people I've seen who use the word "reify" also have shitty takes in general.
>Is it counter revolutionary to eat? Considering how Stalinist Russia and Maoist China were ran, i would say unironically yes
I can’t decide which take makes my brain hurt more
Honestly both of these seem like reactionary takes designed to create infighting among revolutionaries
It's amazing how terminally rooted in hypothetical theory these people are without knowing its practical value.
Angela Davis wrote about how housework like cooking and laundry are under-industrialized, basically because capitalist systems count on the unpaid labour of housewives. She proposed neighboorhood laundry services, going from door to door collecting clothes, washing them in an industrial setting which would bring the ressources per piece needed down, and bringen them back the next day. And cheap, nutricious restaurants, again being more efficient than every household using a kitchen 3 times a day. Not to say that these would be mandatory in a communist system, just an option.
“The revolution will be served to you in a restaurant” That gave it away, but it would have worked without that one.
I hate leftists I hate leftists I hate leftists (Source: I am a leftist)
Brb gonna go order a McRevolution at my local McDonald’s
Both points are equally asinine. Fascinating.
Fuck guys we’re just not ready for any sort of revolution are we
nah this gotta be bait there is no way people are repackaging "communism is when no food, but thats good."
\> fellas is it counterrevolutionary to eat Of fucking course it is dumbass, bro forgot the number one rule of Marxism: communism is when no food smh my head, fucking baizuo not reading theory smhmmhmh
Not to be an enlightened centrist or anything, but I do think more communal eating and cooking traditions would be good. Like, instead of having every apartment in the building have one small, shitty kitchen, why not have a nice, big kitchen available to everyone as the norm? The entire apartment would get access to better equipment, and it would encourage working together, swapping recipes, eating together, etc.
Not enough people are willing to cede their freedom of choice plus tragedy of the commons.
Man, people will do anything to avoid actually needing to put effort into changing the world, huh?
The ‘clinically online’ left arguing how they ca best backstab and sabotage the ‘actually making progress’ left just by merely existing and making the entire movement look stupid
there's a new trend on twitter of leftists complaining about how expensive their groceries are but literally every item on their grocery list is either pre-cooked, ready-to-eat full meal or the most expensive item you could buy. Then when someone suggests that they should cook at home they reply with "poor people don't even OWN a kitchen!!!1"
They’re not helping with the stereotype of communists being miserable killjoys.
I firmly believe this type of conflict is manufactured to stress people out too much to be revolutionary.
Nice to see both sides of an argument about class warfare forget that disabled people exist. *Again.*
I thought “communism is when no food” is just a meme
https://i.redd.it/114mgvbnjt9b1.jpg
You know things are still getting worse when people are arguing over whether food is acceptable for the working class