Communism vs Tradition

[Mr Larkax]

Today i was reading the website of my country's communist party, as i do from time to time, and i started to wonder about their views towards a number of traditional elements of society which i thought would have been against fairly basic communist sociology theory that (i thought) explains that tradition is yet another thing that has the ability to cloud judgment, potentially effect decision making and lifestyle choices that are seen contrary to socialist ways.

Now, i realize that not all culture can be destroyed, that correct culture can be productive and benefit everyone, and really that culture that doesn't really harm anyone or effect anyone much isn't a problem, but where do you draw the line between toxic culture and beneficial culture? I have specific examples that i want to talk about, but i might leave that until after someone has explained the initial questions.

So the question is, does tradition hold any place in socialism and Marxist political theory? And if it does, where is the line drawn between toxic culture and culture that is beneficial?

[TheIrrationalist]

i think the whole discourse about 'tradition' is false. tradition assumes there exists some sort of pure, undefiled form of culture or there is something absolute in the 'old ways'. this idea is completely ahistorical. rather than being principles set in stone, culture should be understood as a process. this is not to say we should go about and destroy all traditional forms of culture. but it should be remembered there definitely does exist some 'traditional' feudalistic practices that should definitely be eradicated.

our current culture is capitalistic culture, and the traditional culture usually pertains to older, remnants of cultural practices from feudalism and beyond. goal of the revolution is to bring about a new culture, a revolutionary culture, free from the reaction of capitalist culture and mentality, or traditional feudalistic 'wisdom'. it is in the struggle where revolutionary culture is forged and old forms are put to the test.

[Jacob Cliff]

It is not so much that the Communists seek to destroy all tradition because it 'doesn't benefit everyone' -- rather, Communists recognize the contingency of such traditional practices, as having a real basis in the material premises of society. The reproduction of these 'traditions' you speak of are not eternal, ossified phenomena -- they, again, have a real basis in the relationships which real, active human beings constitute and are constituted by. If these relations are swept away, the causal basis for said traditions are also swept away.
That being said, it is not just an unconscious move -- that is, the elimination of, say, the longstanding tradition of the Church is something we should consciously seek. The ideas which have found themselves independent of the real material premises which gives rise to them are as active forces in the maintenance of the status quo as the very real, material premises that gives them a reason to exist in the first place. So actively fighting superstition, fighting notions of 'tradition' and backwardness is a necessity as much as fighting those causal factors that give superstition, tradition and backwardness rise in the first place. That which actively justifies the way things are today, which formalizes relations into an ossified eternal status which cannot be changed for whatever reason, will be swept into the fire. We are not fighting for what 'benefits da people' -- we are fighting specifically against this superstition, darkness and reaction because it is a supplement for a scientific understanding of our world and the social relations we are immersed in. Social-self consciousness is an end in itself, is sufficient unto itself -- it is its own ends. Superstition represents the opposite of this, and what is almost always called 'tradition' is the formalization of superstition into some 'national' or 'ethnic heritage.' In this sense, we will end all traditions.

But understand that 'tradition' is entirely contingent, and not some eternal factor that 'benefits people.' Superstition is that which designates something in a way that is ideological, which is unscientific -- a socially self-conscious society, one which is conscious of itself, how each individual relates to society and vise-versa, and is conscious of its historic character, has no room for that which legitimizes superstitious or ideological designations.

[Alet]

This is just what I think but I claim that it is difficult, maybe even almost meaningless to discuss this topic on the level of abstractions. Nobody is able to offer you a panacea which tells you "where to draw the line" and how to qualify "toxic" and "nontoxic" (whatever this means) cultures in a useful way, that is, in a way that lives up to the expectations you seem to have. This is simply because culture is not a thing that exists by itself as a thing, it is a word that refers to very concrete social rituals. Of course, they might relate to a wider ideological (political) context, but to approach this one you would have to analyze the specific examples you chose to hide from us. I will nevertheless try to give you an answer, maybe it will become clear why I consider it to be difficult.

To begin with, we should ask what "tradition" or "culture" really is. The first recognition has to be that which I have just mentioned: Culture is not a thing, which exists by itself and which people relate to in order to call this their "cultural activity", and so on. Instead, it's the other way around: It is in fact an abstraction of the concrete social rituals, which preceded (or is at least congruent with) their designation as culture. When conservatives or even liberals speak of culture, on the other hand, they usually link it with nationalist sentiments, they distinguish their rituals from other ones so as to insist on their identification with them. We Marxists don't have such sentiments towards culture. There is nothing special about any ritual at all, they all are totally arbitrary, and only when it comes to ideology, when the very insistence on them is an expression of a political position, are they given meaning. As to tradition, it follows that this refers to nothing else than the active reproduction of this arbitrariness, which is - as MarxianSocialist has already pointed out - totally contingent.

Long story short, my point is simply that culture as such is meaningless to us. The controversy is at the level of the ideological/political domain, and this is the only key to qualify specific cultural activities properly: Do they reproduce the present state of affairs, do they relate (positively) to superstition, do they even give a meaning to reactionary mindsets? If so, they are to be criticized and, in case of revolution, to be demolished mercilessly. But as I said, you cannot evaluate this without referring to a specific examples. If you give the ones you have in mind, we might discuss this more extensively. There is of course infinitely more to be said about culture, I am not that educated on this topic either. These are just the first thoughts that came to my mind. (They might be a little confused, indeed, I'm afraid I'm lacking the time to structure my posts more properly)

our current culture is capitalistic culture, and the traditional culture usually pertains to older, remnants of cultural practices from feudalism and beyond.

There is not a single remnant of feudalism today. Every cultural practice now relates to the capitalist mode of production. That specific cultures that were prevalent in feudalism, for example Christianity, did not cease to exist is only incidental. They are constituted by an entirely different quality today. If this is what you meant, I will not disagree. I just wanted to make this clear because "remnants of feudalism" to my mind usually refers to state apparatuses which actually impede the reproduction and the development of capitalism.

[ckaihatsu]

A concrete, working definition of 'culture' is definitely lacking here, so I'll propose one: Culture is how society disposes of its free time.

Certainly there's overlap with the domain of *productive* processes, as in what it takes to produce rain / water to grow healthy crops -- ceremony or irrigation -- but since we currently live in a scientific-industrial age I'll dispense with any traditional, productivity-oriented rituals.

Culture, then, I'd say, has to do with what people *want* to do with themselves (and/or feel 'supernaturally' *obligated* to do), and in this, is really 'below the radar' of strictly *socio-material* concerns, such as mass production for the necessities of life.

Would a revolutionary movement have any concern with what 'self-determining' people do in the way of their *self-determination* in *personal* matters -- ?

This is the ultimate gray-area in my estimation, because a revolutionary movement *would* have a collective interest in consciously, directly determining the revolutionary *superstructure* as the population supersedes the era of capital accumulation / capitalism.

So this would be the timeless dialectical dynamic between the interests of the individual and that of larger society -- in a critical, fast-moving period of revolution and transition away from capitalism the larger society probably *could* justify the collective need for less individual discretion and more-political efforts from all, while the very *definition* and 'identity' of humanity would take a hit as a result until such a transitional period was safely transversed.

[Hit The North]

A concrete, working definition of 'culture' is definitely lacking here, so I'll propose one: Culture is how society disposes of its free time.

Certainly there's overlap with the domain of *productive* processes, as in what it takes to produce rain / water to grow healthy crops -- ceremony or irrigation -- but since we currently live in a scientific-industrial age I'll dispense with any traditional, productivity-oriented rituals.

Culture, then, I'd say, has to do with what people *want* to do with themselves (and/or feel 'supernaturally' *obligated* to do), and in this, is really 'below the radar' of strictly *socio-material* concerns, such as mass production for the necessities of life.

I disagree. You are locating two aspects of culture: leisure and ritual. But culture has to be the full constellation of social relations, including the ideological reflections of those relations. You can't exclude production from a definition of culture without doing injury to it, especially in the capitalist mode of production which attempts to commodify all aspects of our lived relations.

Would a revolutionary movement have any concern with what 'self-determining' people do in the way of their *self-determination* in *personal* matters -- ?

What is a 'self-determining' person? And haven't you heard that the personal is political?

[Mr Larkax]

Thanks everyone, its something to think about for me really.

I'm not highly educated in Marxism, i don't know where it actually discusses this kind of stuff in literature but i was more thinking to what some communist society's have done in the past in regards to culture/tradition (which i guess is seen in a mixed light here with the wide array of leftists) of all sorts (especially Russians and the Chinese). I think im still in the boat with 'if it doesn't effect anyone else, its fine', but it was just interesting to find that a communist party is heavily backing any culture tradition period.

The issue was aboriginal land rights in Australia (inb4 shitstorm) and specific local culture, my thing being is it worth protecting 'sacred sites' over big job creation schemes (IE. a coal mine or iron ore mining operation) throughout the country, because as i see it, as someone that doesn't really care about religion, the benefits of employing thousands of miners far outweighs the cost of protecting something 'traditional significant' (and it doesn't matter really what religion/tradition, if there was a vast mine under a church, mosque or synagogue, id have no issue building a mine that provides thousands of jobs there too).

A whole other can of worms is weather aboriginals are being treated in an equal way to everyone else when it comes to how they are treated during the issue, and the fact that most of the profits get siphoned off into CEO's pockets at the moment (because we have no big state owned mining companies). But putting aside all that, just stripping it to its most basic form, its a bit of a conundrum.

Anyway, just a thought, cant say weather id be for or against such a thing unless it actually happened and i could see the pro's and con's.

[Heretek]

There is not a single remnant of feudalism today. Every cultural practice now relates to the capitalist mode of production. That specific cultures that were prevalent in feudalism, for example Christianity, did not cease to exist is only incidental. They are constituted by an entirely different quality today. If this is what you meant, I will not disagree. I just wanted to make this clear because "remnants of feudalism" to my mind usually refers to state apparatuses which actually impede the reproduction and the development of capitalism.

I'd have to disagree there are no remnants of feudalism, or at least components that impede the current order. In daesh, for example, there is a theocratic dictatorship that impedes private ownership of land in favor of the church and/or state. It is not focused on the accumulation of profit, and more than half the population is excluded from work. The state exists to serve the clergy militant branch, rather than a true bourgeoise. The same can be said of some other countries in the middle east and Africa.

Another specific counterpoint would be the caste system of India, which fundamentally removes large portions of labor from the labor pool, discourages private ownership of some classes, restricts what can be private for others, encourages ruralistic subsistence farms, and rather stratifies the population according to arbitrary rules than actual ownership or ability to produce as capitalism does. We, for example, have lumpenproletariat, and they have untouchables. The difference is their condition is inherited and unalterable, for religious reasons alone where ours is inherited, sometimes alterable, and related to their place in production, primarily their lack of one and their criminality.

There is even the Vatican itself. Owned and operated by the church, it produces nothing and allows nothing to be produced. There is no private ownership within it, even if, ostensibly, it is just one large chunk of private land

[Alet]

I'd have to disagree there are no remnants of feudalism, or at least components that impede the current order. In daesh, for example, there is a theocratic dictatorship that impedes private ownership of land in favor of the church and/or state. It is not focused on the accumulation of profit, and more than half the population is excluded from work. The state exists to serve the clergy militant branch, rather than a true bourgeoise. The same can be said of some other countries in the middle east and Africa.

Another specific counterpoint would be the caste system of India, which fundamentally removes large portions of labor from the labor pool, discourages private ownership of some classes, restricts what can be private for others, encourages ruralistic subsistence farms, and rather stratifies the population according to arbitrary rules than actual ownership or ability to produce as capitalism does. We, for example, have lumpenproletariat, and they have untouchables. The difference is their condition is inherited and unalterable, for religious reasons alone where ours is inherited, sometimes alterable, and related to their place in production, primarily their lack of one and their criminality.

There is even the Vatican itself. Owned and operated by the church, it produces nothing and allows nothing to be produced. There is no private ownership within it, even if, ostensibly, it is just one large chunk of private land

Absence of political power by organized religion and private property are not essential features of capitalism. The examples you mention have got absolutely nothing to do with feudalist elements apart from their aesthetic appearance. Daesh, for example, or Islamism in general, is completely a phenomenon of recent globalization. The Vatican is not even worth discussing because it can hardly be qualified as a state as such, it's almost irrelevant. Regarding the caste system in India, I admit that my knowledge on this subject is quite poor but it does not seem to impede the reproduction of capital in any way. We must abandon the liberalist notion of capitalism paving the way for (almost "anarchic") freedom, whatever this is supposed to mean ultimately. What's essential to capitalism is the way the sum total of the social relations constitute the reproduction of society, and nothing else. Capitalism can perfectly work with state property and the absence of bourgeois democracy (as proven by 20th century fascism or China right now), it always necessitates superstition (it is purely incidental that institutional religions are not generally supported in the West), and so on. And don't get me wrong, there is of course such a thing as reaction today, but it is not a genuinely anti-capitalist (feudalist) one.

[ckaihatsu]

I disagree. You are locating two aspects of culture: leisure and ritual. But culture has to be the full constellation of social relations, including the ideological reflections of those relations. You can't exclude production from a definition of culture without doing injury to it, especially in the capitalist mode of production which attempts to commodify all aspects of our lived relations.

Okay, I won't bicker here -- just for the record I'd rather focus on 'chosen culture', again in the mode of how people choose to use their free time.

What is a 'self-determining' person? And haven't you heard that the personal is political?

I'll of course acknowledge *overlap* between the two, but an individual is *one person*, while 'politics' has to do with material interests at *aggregated* / demographic scales, as with class.

[Heretek]

Absence of political power by organized religion and private property are not essential features of capitalism. The examples you mention have got absolutely nothing to do with feudalist elements apart from their aesthetic appearance. Daesh, for example, or Islamism in general, is completely a phenomenon of recent globalization. The Vatican is not even worth discussing because it can hardly be qualified as a state as such, it's almost irrelevant. Regarding the caste system in India, I admit that my knowledge on this subject is quite poor but it does not seem to impede the reproduction of capital in any way. We must abandon the liberalist notion of capitalism paving the way for (almost "anarchic") freedom, whatever this is supposed to mean ultimately. What's essential to capitalism is the way the sum total of the social relations constitute the reproduction of society, and nothing else. Capitalism can perfectly work with state property and the absence of bourgeois democracy (as proven by 20th century fascism or China right now), it always necessitates superstition (it is purely incidental that institutional religions are not generally supported in the West), and so on. And don't get me wrong, there is of course such a thing as reaction today, but it is not a genuinely anti-capitalist (feudalist) one.

Daesh and Islamism are, yes, a completely recent phenomenon, but the right of rule given by religions to authorities is not. Kings were kings because their respective religious head said they had the authority to be as such, and therefore ruled as the word of god. It was the peasants' duty to be peasants on the pain of burning in hell and being the natural order of things. Modern states exist without the blessing of religion, and are profane, as are all their inhabitants, even if they are religious, for the simple reason they do not answer to a religious head. Daesh is attempt to return to such things, and is so far doing so within its territory even if it will ultimately fail. Additionally, the rejection of sciences is a determinedly Dark Age trend, and they do just this, discarding studies showing the boost in productivity gained by women, the benefits to revenue in private, foreign investment, and are completely mercantilist, some what similar to their neighbor and monarchy Saudi Arabia.

Additionally, such religious justifications can be used to impair capital's development, with that oil well there being on holy ground therefore untouchable, or again in India where the role of farmers is to do so endlessly. The reason why investment is not put into modernizing agricultural practices or capitalizing on the spare labor and resources is because it is the place of the farmers, and it is only fit for the farmers to live or work there. I'm not sure if the state owns the land or the villagers do, but regardless it goes on being a hindrance to the bourgeois of the country.

[Alet]

Daesh and Islamism are, yes, a completely recent phenomenon, but the right of rule given by religions to authorities is not. Kings were kings because their respective religious head said they had the authority to be as such, and therefore ruled as the word of god.

And yet, the expression of being a king back then, therefore the role of religion in a feudalist society, was qualitatively different from power and the way it is superstitiously justified today. Again, you are just abstracting the cosmetic features of Daesh from their essential relation to the here and now. But as I've said, absence of political relevance of religious institutions is not what essentially qualifies capitalism just as its existence is not what essentially qualified feudalism. The fact of the matter is that, yes, Daesh indeed wants to establish a theocratical state, and, yes, we are indeed facing a "Dark Age" accompanied by increasing superstition in the natural sciences. The fact of the matter, however, is that these developments do not in any way relate to remnants of feudalism, or it would be ahistorical and anti-Marxist at least to qualify them this way. They are not contingent on feudalist relations of the past but have to wholly be taken by themselves. It's like neo-colonialism: Of course, the colonial past provided the historical conditions for the present but neo-colonialism exists on its own, it does not need the history of colonialism apart from its relation to it on a solely superficial level (terminology, etc.). It's in fact like racism, patriarchy, the family, every superstition, and the list goes on: any social ritual or institution that survives a sublated mode of production has changed its essential character and is not reducible to its past anymore. This was my initial argument. Referring back to the "Dark Age trend", the point is that there is not a new class that does not fit into the bourgeois-proletarian antagonism but revives feudalist relations, and this is precisely the point: The "Dark Age trend", the developments we designate as akin to feudalism, as "neo-feudalist", if you like, are "capitalist" to the core. They represent a change of the capitalist mode of production, but not its abolition; they are an alternative development of capitalist society.

Daesh, apart from its aesthetical appearance, is precisely not feudalist because it relates to the universality of capitalism in the era of globalization. Why is it that Islamist terrorist organizations were militarily supported by advanced capitalist countries since the 1980s? Why is it that a third of IS fighters were recruited from foreign countries, and that most fighters from Europe are politically and economically marginalized proletarians with Arab/Muslim background? Why is it that Islamism, as an ideology, is not only a phenomenon of the global periphery but also relatively widespread in the West, and why was its growth congruent with the development of neoliberalism? It is impossible to deny that Islamism in general and Daesh in particular relate to and fit into the universality of global capitalism. You may call it neo-feudalism or whatever you like, the fact remains, that it doesn't owe its existence to the feudalism of the past. This is all what I am saying here: What seems to be a renaissance of feudalist elements is actually a phenomenon of late capitalism to the core. It must be recognized that capitalism does not entail bourgeois democracy by necessity.

Daesh is the reflection of the barbarous cruelties that are given birth to by late capitalism and the irrational logic of capital accumulation. For transnational companies, accumulation of capital is an end in itself, and all the misery and barbarism that is left behind by this process is only a byproduct that happens to facilitate the maximization of profits. The Islamic State, on the other hand, is the exact opposite: For Daesh, accumulation of capital is a means to an end. They are probably the wealthiest terrorist organization and they appreciate their oil resources, but only because it serves their aim to literally slaughter all unbelievers and to establish a theocratical state. This kind of reflection is not even entirely new: The Nazis made use of the most modern technologies and accumulated capital as well, in order to build extermination camps, in which they killed political enemies and "lower races". And it is indeed justifiable to speak of Daesh as a fascist movement. However, characterizing Nazism or Islamism as anti-capitalist feudalism or even remnants of feudalism would only be anachronistic in both cases. They have to be understood in relation to and as a potential part of the way society reproduces itself (i.e. capitalism).

The reason why investment is not put into modernizing agricultural practices or capitalizing on the spare labor and resources is because it is the place of the farmers, and it is only fit for the farmers to live or work there. I'm not sure if the state owns the land or the villagers do, but regardless it goes on being a hindrance to the bourgeois of the country.

Maybe, but I'm not focussing on the bourgeois of the country, I'm talking about India as a whole. There is simply no need for India to modernize agriculture, because the capitalist centers are at the coasts, where the high-tech clusters develop. The tech industry is the heart of capitalist India, it's what constitutes capital accumulation there in the first place. There is simply no reason for the bourgeoisie to deliberately develop the rural areas of India, confining development to the cities has worked perfectly well so far, and the caste system does not really disturb this development in any way.

[John Nada]

There is not a single remnant of feudalism today. Every cultural practice now relates to the capitalist mode of production. That specific cultures that were prevalent in feudalism, for example Christianity, did not cease to exist is only incidental. They are constituted by an entirely different quality today. If this is what you meant, I will not disagree. I just wanted to make this clear because "remnants of feudalism" to my mind usually refers to state apparatuses which actually impede the reproduction and the development of capitalism.

Not feudalism proper, but semi-feudalism, something like pre-revolution France, Russia or China. A type of capitalism developed in (neo/semi)colonies. Part of the world imperialist-capitalist system, yet with old pre-capitalist elements re-purposed for imperialist-capitalism. Productive relations of pre-capitalism(merchants, clergy, pre-capitalist bureaucracy, landlords, various forms of bondage), productive forces developed(or not) for imperialist-capitalism, and often elements of pre-capitalism in the superstructure such as absolutism, pre-capitalist patriarchy and/or theocracy. Often the cities will be very much modernized to an extent, but with the countryside underdeveloped.

In the imperialist age, a lot of countries did not complete bourgeois-democratic revolutions. They were not allowed to develop even bourgeois-democracy, or capitalism that could seriously compete with more establish imperialist powers. An agrarian revolution or even agrarian reforms were often incomplete, exemplified by latifundias. Imperialist-capitalist formed an alliance with the pre-capitalist ruling classes, reforming them into comprador-capitalists for super-exploitation. This would be like the "Prussian path" to capitalism that Lenin described:

Those two paths of objectively possible bourgeois development we would call the Prussian path and the American path, respectively. In the first case feudal landlord economy slowly evolves into bourgeois, Junker landlord economy, which condemns the peasants to decades of most harrowing expropriation and bondage, while at the same time a small minority of Grossbauern (“big peasants”) arises. In the second case there is no landlord economy, or else it is broken up by revolution, which confiscates and splits up the feudal estates. In that case the peasant predominates, becomes the sole agent of agriculture, and evolves into a capitalist farmer. In the first case the main content of the evolution is transformation of feudal bondage into servitude and capitalist exploitation on the land of the feudal landlords—Junkers. In the second case the main background is transformation of the patriarchal peasant into a bourgeois farmer.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/len...ogr/ch01s5.htm

From this semi-feudal, (neo/semi)colonial base, a backwards superstructure arises. This is partly why the state in the peripheral is often dominated by the older landowning families, clergy, the remnants of the colonial bureaucracy, ect.

For example, when it is said that things like Daesh are a modern creation of imperialism, this is correct. Imperialism subverted democratic-revolutions in the Arab nation[US and even the USSR(under the guise of "non-capitalist development") supported various despots and coups]. Much of the bureaucratic-capitalist reforms were along the "Prussian path"(ie not to the benefit of poor peasants and proletarians); it might not be a coincidence that much of the big cities in Syria are pro-governement and rural areas salafi-jihadist. The Gulf states are an anachronistic absolutism, propagating a salafi-jihadist ideology. States like Saudi Arabia are quite literal run by nobles and clergy turned comprador-bourgeoisie, with forms of servitude still prevalent.

Similar can be found in other neo-colonial nations, with a large peasant and semi-proletarian population and the typical struggle between landowners, compradors-capitalists, national-bourgeoisie and bureaucratic-capitalist often mistaken for pro-democracy/anti-corruption "revolutions" or "reforms".

--------------------------

Somewhat back on topic, the USSR was confronted with a low level of cultural development. Due to Tsarist absolutism, illiteracy and superstitions were rampant. It was inhibiting the movement towards socialism. What Lenin proposed towards the end of his life:

Two main tasks confront us, which constitute the epoch—to reorganize our machinery of state, which is utterly useless, in which we took over in its entirety from the preceding epoch; during the past five years of struggle we did not, and could not, drastically reorganize it. Our second task is educational work among the peasants. And the economic object of this educational work among the peasants is to organize the latter in cooperative societies. If the whole of the peasantry had been organized in cooperatives, we would by now have been standing with both feet on the soil of socialism. But the organization of the entire peasantry in cooperative societies presupposes a standard of culture, and the peasants (precisely among the peasants as the overwhelming mass) that cannot, in fact, be achieved without a cultural revolution.

Our opponents told us repeatedly that we were rash in undertaking to implant socialism in an insufficiently cultured country. But they were misled by our having started from the opposite end to that prescribed by theory (the theory of pedants of all kinds), because in our country the political and social revolution preceded the cultural revolution, that very cultural revolution which nevertheless now confronts us.

This cultural revolution would now suffice to make our country a completely socialist country; but it presents immense difficulties of a purely cultural (for we are illiterate) and material character (for to be cultured we must achieve a certain development of the material means of production, we must have a certain material base).

https://www.marxists.org/archive/len...923/jan/06.htm (yeah, it was Lenin, not Mao, who first came up with the idea of a cultural revolution)

I'm not highly educated in Marxism, i don't know where it actually discusses this kind of stuff in literature but i was more thinking to what some communist society's have done in the past in regards to culture/tradition (which i guess is seen in a mixed light here with the wide array of leftists) of all sorts (especially Russians and the Chinese). I think im still in the boat with 'if it doesn't effect anyone else, its fine', but it was just interesting to find that a communist party is heavily backing any culture tradition period.

I believe the USSR and PRC position was "make the old serve the new". They didn't wholesale throw out everything pre-revolution, but attempted to make a new socialist culture yet retain the good.

The issue was aboriginal land rights in Australia (inb4 shitstorm) and specific local culture, my thing being is it worth protecting 'sacred sites' over big job creation schemes (IE. a coal mine or iron ore mining operation) throughout the country, because as i see it, as someone that doesn't really care about religion, the benefits of employing thousands of miners far outweighs the cost of protecting something 'traditional significant' (and it doesn't matter really what religion/tradition, if there was a vast mine under a church, mosque or synagogue, id have no issue building a mine that provides thousands of jobs there too).

A whole other can of worms is weather aboriginals are being treated in an equal way to everyone else when it comes to how they are treated during the issue, and the fact that most of the profits get siphoned off into CEO's pockets at the moment (because we have no big state owned mining companies). But putting aside all that, just stripping it to its most basic form, its a bit of a conundrum.

Anyway, just a thought, cant say weather id be for or against such a thing unless it actually happened and i could see the pro's and con's.

No, this isn't just religious superstitions vs. development, it's about national oppression of Indigenous Australians. Communists and the proletariat should side with the oppressed. The Indigenous Australians are colonized oppressed nations which are deprived of the right to self-determination. Their resources are plundered by Australian imperialism. It's not them determining the development on their own terms, but the Australian bourgeoisie. Fighting superexploitation weakens the bourgeoisie. It would be the crudest economism, along the lines of the "theory of productive forces", to think that imperialism and environmental destruction will "develop" Australia's internal colonies to the benefit of the masses.

[pepezefrog]

reactionary and capitalist culture should be removed to the core, but traditional culture should be preserved or at least left untouched to keep society together. the cultural revolution conducted by mao made a mistake by purging too much aspect of their traditional culture, but it didnt do only harm either.

[Full Metal Bolshevik]

reactionary and capitalist culture should be removed to the core, but traditional culture should be preserved or at least left untouched to keep society together. the cultural revolution conducted by mao made a mistake by purging too much aspect of their traditional culture, but it didnt do only harm either.

What is traditional non reactionary/capitalist culture?