That, and I think also US cultural hegemony, which means the US left ends up setting the tone for a lot of online leftist discourse. So a lot of otherwise well-informed people are softer on the whole drug question than they should be.
Yeah i mean every single socialist country analysed drugs and their cultural impact and distribution source from the class point of view and adopted harsh stance on them. Western leftists somehow infallibly handwave it to the historical trauma, which might be partially true for China but what about all the other countries which historically never had any problems with drugs before (and those that abandoned socialism inevitably now have)?
For some reason people seems to think such pretty heavy kind of escapism is good by itself.
people seems to think such pretty heavy kind of escapism is good by itself.
You could argue that’s partly just a natural, unfortunate human tendency – even the USSR, from what I’ve heard, had a fairly large problem with alcholism – but the 1960s were when this sort of thinking really seemed to become mainstream within the western left. Honestly, I think it’s just petty-bourgeois aesthetics masquerading as Marxism, with perhaps a good dose of CIA manipulation thrown in.
even the USSR, from what I’ve heard, had a fairly large problem with alcholism
Slavic countries in general had problem with alcoholism, and “problem” it’s an understatement, alcohol was the same weapon in class war here as opium in China (only more domestic and less colonizing) - unholy combination of feudalism relics, propination law, no labour laws and trucking system (with good dose of antisemitism, it’s Europe after all) made that a vile plague.
Of course building socialism helped immediately and immensely, but it was one of the issues that needed time to fix, for example Soviet prohibition in RFSFR was mostly unsuccessful. Only over decades of state spirits monopoly and antialcohol campaigns situation did improved quite radically.
“Romanticization” might be the wrong word, but you certainly run across the sentiment that the cartels really aren’t that bad. The worst instance of this I ever saw was in the comments to some ultraleft “Maoist” rag – I think it was the LLCO’s Monkey Smashes Heaven – where people were saying that Mexican drug cartels are “more revolutionary” than the DPRK.
Exactly, we need to stop this weird romanticization of drug cartels that seems to keep showing up in leftist spaces.
I swear the mere word “drugs” seems to do weird things to people. Weird echoes of anarchism or what?
That, and I think also US cultural hegemony, which means the US left ends up setting the tone for a lot of online leftist discourse. So a lot of otherwise well-informed people are softer on the whole drug question than they should be.
Yeah i mean every single socialist country analysed drugs and their cultural impact and distribution source from the class point of view and adopted harsh stance on them. Western leftists somehow infallibly handwave it to the historical trauma, which might be partially true for China but what about all the other countries which historically never had any problems with drugs before (and those that abandoned socialism inevitably now have)?
For some reason people seems to think such pretty heavy kind of escapism is good by itself.
You could argue that’s partly just a natural, unfortunate human tendency – even the USSR, from what I’ve heard, had a fairly large problem with alcholism – but the 1960s were when this sort of thinking really seemed to become mainstream within the western left. Honestly, I think it’s just petty-bourgeois aesthetics masquerading as Marxism, with perhaps a good dose of CIA manipulation thrown in.
Slavic countries in general had problem with alcoholism, and “problem” it’s an understatement, alcohol was the same weapon in class war here as opium in China (only more domestic and less colonizing) - unholy combination of feudalism relics, propination law, no labour laws and trucking system (with good dose of antisemitism, it’s Europe after all) made that a vile plague.
Of course building socialism helped immediately and immensely, but it was one of the issues that needed time to fix, for example Soviet prohibition in RFSFR was mostly unsuccessful. Only over decades of state spirits monopoly and antialcohol campaigns situation did improved quite radically.
I’ve never once seen leftist spaces “romanticizing” drug cartels. They’re capitalists and kulaks and trash.
“Romanticization” might be the wrong word, but you certainly run across the sentiment that the cartels really aren’t that bad. The worst instance of this I ever saw was in the comments to some ultraleft “Maoist” rag – I think it was the LLCO’s Monkey Smashes Heaven – where people were saying that Mexican drug cartels are “more revolutionary” than the DPRK.
Do you have a link to that? Sounds horrible.