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
None because they all predate dialectical materialist philosophy. But I guess stories about tricksters stealing knowledge from the gods and giving it to humanity (the organisms) in order to create humanity (the modern social being) are halfway there.
Edit: also consider writing Till Eulenspiegel fanfic
None because they all predate dialectical materialist philosophy
Please, this is such a eurocentric perspective
Dialectical materials philosophy is a European philosophy based in other European philosophies
based in other European philosophies
It didn’t appear entirely in a European vacuum; there are no “purely European” ideas; Europe is a fake continent. Marx was at least in part inspired (invidious link) by the writings of anthropologists studying the legal systems of the indigenous nations of Turtle Island, who were (and are) being genocided by euros.
It’s the philosophical worldview of scientific socialism. Presumably it would have been developed even if the Paleocene stabilized and Paleolake Megachad civilization had an industrial revolution. But that’s impossible to prove.
Maybe the play Hadestown? Prometheus stealing fire from the gods probably works. Most of Aesops fables are vaguely left-ish and can definitely be spun as so. The bible-related commie phrase is usually the pre-king-james lord’s prayer: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who are indebted to us.” There’s a theory about the axial age being a response to coinage. I wouldn’t say it’s airtight, but it’s a fun thing to believe lol. Honestly, I find myths more interesting without recontexualizing them because a lot of polytheistic stuff has regional and cultural aspects to it that doesn’t really get translated to "god of fire, goddess of death, etc.
I would argue that myths and stories are written by the wealthy class of people, hence I won’t expect anything that will undermine the interest of that class. I think denying education to workers or children of workers was a common tactic to suppress workers.
Myths almost always involve kings and other figures of power. So as you vaguely mentioned most of the time it’s the villains of the story that may hold a “progressive” view, but there is always a twist to make them look bad.
From your post I understand that you are not necessarily looking for existing stories, but you also want to write. Maybe trying to work out how a common person may experience the events in a myth will give some ideas.
Do post if you write anything. I’m really interested to read.
I’d recommend looking into the story of the making of The Great Law of Peace of the Hadenosaunee, which is itself part of the law:
(from Kayanerenko:wa The Great Law of Peace by Kayanesenh Paul Williams)
Upon first reading or hearing the Great Law, one could easily conclude that the story of how the Peacemaker brought people and nations together is a pleasant legend, but not law. As a legend, it includes entertaining stories of the hero making a magical stone canoe; tricking a cannibal into changing his evil ways; surviving a great fall from a tree into raging waters; devising enchanting songs; and confronting monsters and evil wizards. These do not seem to be the stuff of law. A North American lawyer looking for the Haudenosaunee constitution might conclude that the true lawmaking only began once the Peacemaker had gathered all the chiefs and clan mothers together in one place, and began to identify and create legislative authorities and structures. It would be easy to conclude this, but it would be wrong.
The Kayanerenko:wa is all law. Every part of it is law.
The story of how the Peacemaker brought the people together is not just a story. Certainly it is full of metaphors and lessons, but the story also contains many of the fundamental concepts and principles of the law. All great messages are taught by metaphor. Jesus, in his “Good Message” (which is what “Gospel” Means in Middle English), resorted to “parables.” Buddha told stories (and, as the Acoma Pueblo scholar Simon Ortiz said: “There are no truths, only stories”). Centuries later, history and metaphor become mixed. The message remains constant. Metaphor - the ability of human beings to think bridges between different concepts - is essential to visualising any legal system.
The meta-narrative of the Great Law provides the tone and spirit: the determination that the bloodshed must stop, and will stop.
Taoism has criticisms of ‘great man theory’ type thinking but also kinda falls into a kind of ‘peasant tailism’ laissez-faire-but-for-illiterate-peasant-farmers attitude. directly addresses how many problems are socially constructed, such as the ‘lock creates the thief’ idea where the guy locking up a hoard of treasure is the one creating the conditions for the crime to arise rather than the criminal being individually responsible for summoning evil into the world or something. probably more compatible with anarchism than democratic centralist conceptions of communism but i’ve only read like one book about it, theres kind of a current of ‘don’t rock the boat or interfere in things unnecessarily with proactive rulership’ attitude.
