[Pants-of-dog]

Now, I'm glad you guys come back on topic after your little mobbing episode.

Personally, I have neither heard of "left-wing architecture" nor of "authoritarian architecture." I very much suspect that there are no such things.

http://www.atrium-see.eu/

Architecture of Totalitarian Regimes in Urban Managements - ATRIUM
The Architecture of Totalitarian Regimes in Urban Managements is an ambitious project which aims to put into greater focus a key element of twentieth-century European history, heritage and memory.

Also,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinist_architecture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_architecture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_architecture

As Dennis Doordan puts it, "Megalomania is a feature of totalitarian architecture in general and reflects a way of thinking in which size is equated with power, majesty, and virility."

[SolarCross]

Now, I'm glad you guys come back on topic after your little mobbing episode.

Personally, I have neither heard of "left-wing architecture" nor of "authoritarian architecture." I very much suspect that there are no such things. What we are talking about here is the ubiquitous ugliness of Soviet architecture. And anybody who has lived under that oppressive atmosphere is marked for life. The mindless xenophobia we witness throughout all of Eastern Europe is a devastating witness to this fact. It will take another generation to heal. But that is of course something Western theoretical socialists will never get into their head.

One good thing about the EU is that we in the capitalist west are getting to meet many people who lived and breathed life in the Soviet block or at least the post-soviet space. I have had the privilege of having conversations with Poles, Bulgarians, Romanians, Lithuanians.. some are well on the way to becoming close personal friends. What they have to say about the governance and economy of the lands they come from is quite tragic.

[Atlantis]

"Megalomania is a feature of totalitarian architecture in general and reflects a way of thinking in which size is equated with power, majesty, and virility."

The Internet is a wonderful thing, we can find everything and more. Doesn't mean it's relevant. The drab concrete blocks (Plattenbauten) have little in common with monumental architecture typical of authoritarian regimes. They were drab and depressing things to produce ugly little people. That is in no way captured by the expression "left-wing architecture."

One good thing about the EU is that we in the capitalist west are getting to meet many people who lived and breathed life in the Soviet block or at least the post-soviet space. I have had the privilege of having conversations with Poles, Bulgarians, Romanians, Lithuanians.. some are well on the way to becoming close personal friends. What they have to say about the governance and economy of the lands they come from is quite tragic.

As a Westerner I wasn't really subject to the repressive sides of the regime, but each time I took a day trip to East Berlin, I sighed a sigh of relief after passing the border guards (Volkspolizei) back into the West.

There are tens of millions in the East of Europe who still have the living memory of what the real socialism was like. They feel nauseated by Western intellectuals flirting with some sort of socialism that will never be.

[Prosthetic Conscience]

Commentary on totalitarian architecture from 1938:




http://benicek.livejournal.com/99596.html

[SolarCross]

As a Westerner I wasn't really subject to the repressive sides of the regime, but each time I took a day trip to East Berlin, I sighed a sigh of relief after passing the border guards (Volkspolizei) back into the West.

There are tens of millions in the East of Europe who still have the living memory of what the real socialism was like. They feel nauseated by Western intellectuals flirting with some sort of socialism that will never be.

Somewhat perversely I am a bit envious of you that you had the chance to see with your own eyes the otherside of the wall. It must have been a surreal experience; one moment you are in a world that makes sense then like Alice or Dorothy you are through the looking glass and over the rainbow into wonky wacky land where everything is just wrong.

I guess watching "Goodbye Lenin" is the closest I can get to that experience.

[The Immortal Goon]

Monumental architecture has been a standard since the Neolithic.

Get over it. For every example of Soviet Monumental architecture, I could could show you two capitalist examples.

It doesn't mean anything in this context beyond ignoring statements about the international character of capitalism and other things brought up in the thread.

But hey, if it makes you feel good to really punch that straw man, keep doing so!

[annatar1914]

Monumental architecture has been a standard since the Neolithic.

Get over it. For every example of Soviet Monumental architecture, I could could show you two capitalist examples.

It doesn't mean anything in this context beyond ignoring statements about the international character of capitalism and other things brought up in the thread.

But hey, if it makes you feel good to really punch that straw man, keep doing so!

They use a narrow subjective category of aesthetic appeal to judge and condemn an period of revolutionary time. Communism is a very interesting subject to me, but I find objective studies upon Anticommunism to be a rather unexplored territory, or at least it seems to me.

[Davea8]

This entire thread has left me feeling somewhat depressed, not because of what socialism is, but because socialism has been twisted, distorted, and misrepresented as something that happened in the Soviet Union. Socialism is collective worker control of the means of production. And to have that control it is necessary to also have collective worker control of government. But what has been presented here (Soviet structure and Soviet government) is a government that controls workers.

Somebody says "that is what socialism becomes!" but then by definition, that is not socialism! If you do not have collective worker control of both government and the means of production, you don't have socialism. But no one seems to have thought of this.

The Soviet Union was, and today Russia remains, an economy of state capitalism. You disagree? Then is there a standard and pervasive collective control across the nation by workers of the entire operation of their place of work? Do they decide among themselves what to produce, where to produce, how to produce, and what is to be done with any excess earnings? Do they collectively decide on the pay scale for all who work there? No? Then they do not have socialism.

[SolarCross]

Thanks Dave! That clears everything up, the USSR was capitalist and the USA is socialist.

[ComradeTim]

Workers in america directly control the means of production?

[Conscript]

Did you just waste a thought on the troll taxizen?

[SolarCross]

Workers in america directly control the means of production?

They can buy shares? Start a business of their own? Rise up the corporate ladder into a management position?

Plenty of options if you want them.

[Conscript]

That has nothing to do with common ownership of the means of production.

[SolarCross]

That has nothing to do with common ownership of the means of production.

You're right it's better.

[ComradeTim]

Regardless, using words correctly is important. Try to do so.

[SolarCross]

Regardless, using words correctly is important. Try to do so.

Well Dave may have been a bit unorthodox in claiming the USSR was an example of capitalism and that socialism flourishes in the USA but I think we needn't get all school ma'amish on him?

[mikema63]

Well Dave may have been a bit unorthodox in claiming the USSR was an example of capitalism and that socialism flourishes in the USA but I think we needn't get all school ma'amish on him?

Just a bit unorthodox?

[Davea8]

Thanks Dave! That clears everything up, the USSR was capitalist and the USA is socialist.

I don't play your game of silliness. Clarity on this is important if we are to work past the confusion we've been handed.

[Davea8]

Well Dave may have been a bit unorthodox in claiming the USSR was an example of capitalism and that socialism flourishes in the USA but I think we needn't get all school ma'amish on him?

Not only are you the one behaving as a troll, but you also trollishly mischaracterize my post. I never suggested socialism exists in the U.S. anywhere in my post. But I understand your desperate need to make the reality look as silly as you can.

[Davea8]

Thanks Dave! That clears everything up, the USSR was capitalist and the USA is socialist.

BTW, Marx warned against state capitalism, but you wouldn't know about that.