I guess I’m looking for myth that promotes communal ideas, relates to worker alienation, etc.? I think of the book of Acts in the bible, that’s somewhere between an example of how christians are supposed to live and a defense of paul before he’s executed, right? but incidentally the book has ideas that can be carried forward and developed into a marxist-friendly understanding of how to live, even if it’s loaded in stuff a well read marxist would find objectionable, there will be no perfect examples and i find it tiresome to get lost in pedantry about it so spare me!!!

I also wanna write some. Like “hades began to push and proliferate communism because he was horrified by the trauma of the humans coming through his gates and despised our cruel fates” feels like a decent basis for a mythic story idk

look i dont wanna get into the relationship of myth and religion to marxism, not really, i just like writing fake myth and i need an idea of what’s out there in order to make something worthy of the concept

  • Wertheimer [any]
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    411 days ago

    Just looking for a decent basis for a mythic story? Plenty of starting places - myths that promote acts of kindness toward and protection of strangers, certain civic myths that you could rewrite from a class-conscious perspective, Lives of the Saints who practiced communal living, etc.

    Perhaps of interest - the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini and of Jean-Marie Straub & Daniele Huillet. They were all communist filmmakers who specialized in adapting classic literary texts. Pasolini has an Oedipus, a Medea, and a Gospel According to St. Matthew; Straub-Huillet have an Antigone, The Death of Empedocles, and Moses and Aron.

    Some other examples that might fit:

    • the secession(s) of the Plebs in the early Roman Republic (closer to mythology than history)
    • Yudhishthira’s refusal to abandon his dog upon his ascension to heaven in the Mahabharata
    • Zeus going around incognito checking to see if people treat their guests correctly
    • the Euripides tragedies about refugees