#red sails

[marxistcomedy]

The term commodity fetishism objectively should bring to mind the way economic actors, both rich and poor, declare themselves powerless before the pressures exerted by the world of commodities (“I’m sorry I have to fire you, but the market told us your services aren’t needed”). It’s conceptually quite similar to Adam Smith’s much-celebrated liberal notion of “the invisible hand of the market,” but rather than benevolent and wise Marx invites us to see this system as a sinister cult. The term commodity fetishism was never meant to scold people for liking material things; it’s not meant to generate guilt after the realization that one craves certain consumer goods (“I’m so bad, but those new shoes sure look pretty”).

Commodity fetishism describes the objective fact that in capitalism we don’t generally relate to each other as humans asking each other to do things, but rather indirectly command each other through commodities. If I go to a restaurant, I don’t beg the cook to make me a meal and the waiter to deliver it, nor do I imperiously threaten them with violence, nor do I cajole them into it. I just buy the meal. The meal itself then appears to command them to move, like a little god! And I in turn must similarly follow the commands of commodities in order to acquire the money to purchase such meals. This is how the factory comes to want to be used, and how the tropical fruit comes to want to find its way to Stockholm. As Marx puts it:

“To [producers], their own social action takes the form of the action of objects, which rule the producers instead of being ruled by them.”

From this perspective, one of the central tasks of communists is to liberate workers not from work or desire itself, but from a generalized lack of decision-making agency in the face of crude economic fetishism. People should decide what people do, not commodities! Looking for alternatives to enslavement by commodities, some look back to feudal, religious, and romantic patriarchal forms of despotism, but socialists look ahead, towards socialism’s multidimensional interaction and negotiation, demotic and democratic.

#red sails #roderic day #essays*

[ltwilliammowett]

The Eye of the Wind, a topsail schooner from 1911

#tall ship #red sails #eye of the wind #topsail schooner #1911 #age of steam original

[balkanparamo]

Red Sails in the Sunset

#art #photography #sunset #boats #red sails #scenery #landscape

[letmeinimafairy]

First part of a commission for @mythicalfawn , a pirate ship on awesome agate with wild edge

#tall ship #painted stones #sailing ship #nautical art #miniature #sea #storm #rock painting #agate #pendant #minerals #painted rocks #piracy #pirates #pirate ship #seascape #red sails #my art

[alanshemper]

45 minute read: Zionist Colonialism in Palestine (1965) by Fayez A. Sayegh 🇵🇸

#long read #anti zionisim #palestine #red sails #redsails.org #history #history of Palestine

[rastronomicals]

6:55 AM EDT October 12, 2023:

David Bowie - “Red Sails” From the album Lodger (May 18, 1979)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

File under:    Hanging Out With Brian Eno in Switzerland Music

–

#David Bowie #Lodger #Red Sails #'But We Told People We Were in Berlin'

[themusesof75]

Red Sails

#the sea beast #the real beast is man #animation appreciation #cg animation #ocean waves #red sails

[accidentallyrose]

The Happiness Enjoyment.

#mural #Chinese junk #chinese ship #wall painting #red sails

[ukrheart]

#gift ideas #etsy #art #painting #for men #etsyshop #etsyseller #etsygifts #artwork #artforsale #paintingforsale #boats for sale #boats #fishingboat #sailingboat #regatta #sea #seascape #sailboats #red sails #yachts #ukrainianart #ukrainian artist #customized

[lymphomalass]

Just to share one of my watercolour sailing paintings that's on display at Deryn Cooper's wonderful five star Café on the Green near Manchester Airport.

I've been catching up on loading my coastal art of sailboats at Bae Trearddur Bay (on Ynys Môn/Anglesey) to my Redbubble store, so it's now available here too:

The myth is a 14' clinker built gaff rigged sailing boat. The Myths with their distinctive turkey red sails were first adopted for racing in Trearddur in 1922. At the club's centenary the fleet of Myths stood at over 40. They create iconic images as they compete against each other along the North Wales coast.

Thanks!

Sam aka LymphomaLass xx

#anglesey #anglesey coastal path #anglesey life #myth #myths #myth sailing #myth sailing boat #myth sailboat #myth sailing boats #myth sailboats #sailing boats #sailboats #ynys môn #ynys mon #ynys mon cymru #north wales #north wales coast #red sails #turkey red sails

[marxistcomedy]

Anyone working in counter-propaganda can testify to a curious experience: we’ll put in hours of careful research collecting an impeccable set of resources that undermines some warmongering narrative, and we’ll eagerly share it with someone who claims to despise racism in all its forms — say, an outspoken opponent of the West’s so-called “War on Terror.” Unexpectedly, we are met with a response that is somewhere between chilly reticence and downright hostility. What’s going on?

From our perspective, we’re offering water to a person who’s self-identified as thirsty, and yet they react as if we were trying to poison them! They turn on a dime to defend the same institutions whose lies they were denouncing just moments before. At this point the sense of pride and accomplishment that comes from seeing through propaganda and putting puzzle pieces together into a satisfying historical account gets brutally transformed into its exact opposite: a sense of crushing defeat. In response to this bitter experience, many researchers — serious people, with plenty of experience reading and writing, and sometimes even of being published! — lash out. They decide that people have been “brainwashed” beyond the point where they can be reached by words or rational appeal. They “realize” that the masters of propaganda have been far more successful than we first imagined: it turns out we’re not David fighting Goliath, we’re more like an ant facing an asteroid.

The same inquisitive nature that first led them to unravel war propaganda narratives begins to feed an even larger psycho-historical narrative, and nihilism takes hold. The tragic cycle begins to appear eternal: innocent, well-meaning, hard-working folks are, time and again, viciously tricked by the scapegoating of a new rogue in the gallery — Indigenous, Black, Spanish, Jewish, Soviet, Vietnamese, Cuban, Serbian, Muslim, Libyan, Syrian, Korean, Venezuelan, Russian, Chinese. Due to the sheer power of propaganda and mass-media, the masses helplessly fall for hatred and volunteer for war, even though it comes at a very high cost to ourselves, our loved ones, and our ideals (religion, environmentalism, etc.). Sadly, the innate human propensity to “hate the Other” seals our fate as a society… or something along those lines.

I am going to argue that this narrative is nonsense. It tries to pass off as universal and eternal something that in reality is particular and ephemeral. In short: Westerners aren’t helpless innocents whose minds are injected with atrocity propaganda, science fiction-style; they’re generally smug bourgeois proletarians who intelligently seek out as much racist propaganda as they can get their hands on. This is because it fundamentally makes them feel better about who they are and how they live. The psychic and material costs are rationally worth the benefits. As for those anti-imperialists who don’t participate in this festival of xenophobia — and here I include myself — we have our own elitist consolation: we accept the tragedy of masses of gullible sheeple falling for cunning propaganda because having overcome it flatters our own intelligence. The more we condemn society’s stupidity, the smarter we feel in comparison.

But am I not just worsening the problem, aggravating our hopelessness, by criticizing the critics in a way that suggests that no one escapes ideological self-flattery? I don’t think so. Paradoxically, it brings us all back to a more even and possibility-rich playing field.

The prevailing populist narrative grants the People (of the West) moral innocence by attributing to them utter stupidity and naivety; I invert the equation and demand a Marxist narrative instead: Westerners are willingly complicit in crimes because they instinctively and correctly understand that they benefit as a class (as a global bourgeois proletariat) from the exploitation enabled by their military and their propaganda (in Gramscian: organs of coercion and consent). We’re not as stupid as we’re made out to be. This means that we can be reasoned with, that there is a way out.

[emphasis mine]

#very necessary read rn imo #red sails #roderic day

[ltwilliammowett]

The Disappearing beauty of Greenland, by Albert Dros, 2022

#tall ship #red sails #yacht #peter I and peter II #greenland

[fauvester]

outfit swap 😈😈

#svsss #bingqui #moshang #THE STRUMPET DUMPLINGS ON DISPLAY! THE KNIVES ARE OUT!! #lbh SHIVERINGGGGG #i do not think red complements mr mobei juns coloring... but here we are #meanwhile sqh swanning around with his arms out trying to catch the wind in his big sleeves like a sailing ship #like Ah this is what it feels like to be the narratives favorite... i see

[chasingrainbowsforever]

Jana Gansow

#sailing #sailboats #sunsets #red orange yellow

[cryptixotic]

⚔︎ 𝕷𝖆 𝕱𝖔𝖗𝖈𝖊 𝕽𝖔𝖚𝖌𝖊 ⚔︎

Nostalgia made me watch the One Piece live action - And i loved the ships so much it made me want to draw my own spin on them - inspired by both anime and film, but also by antique portolan charts (and their lovely sea monsters) !

• The Baratie • The Going Merry •

#one piece #one piece live action #red haired pirates #red haired shanks #red force #lord of the coast #one piece ships #;^) #antique art #i though a carrack was a fitting choice for the red force; they're the spiritual successors of drakkars ! #i assume the red force simply got her name from Shanks - but i couldn't resist giving her a few red sails !

[rastronomicals]

1:15 AM EDT October 6, 2023:

David Bowie - "Red Sails" From the album Lodger (May 18, 1979)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

File under:    Hanging Out With Brian Eno in Switzerland Music

#David Bowie #Lodger #Red Sails #'But We Told People We Were in Berlin'