Any mythology that suggests an ongoing struggle between rulers and subjects where old systems are destroyed and replaced by new systems has some leftist potential.

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

@Philosophosphorous@hexbear.net here mentioned Daoism, and I’d like to drop this article from Red Sails that compares and contrasts Daoism with Dialectical Materialism. This isn’t a mythology as you asked, but hopefully you may find it useful. There are similarities between when it comes to seeing the world as a constant flow with a unity of opposites. There are differences too, where Daoism sees change as cyclical (no progress) while Dialectical Materialism sees change as an upward-moving spiral (contradictions move systems forward and their “overcoming” moves the system to a higher set of contradictions). It also gives a good explanation of Dialectics.

The article also discussed how Daoism influenced Mao and his military ideas.

Here’s the article: https://redsails.org/maoist-and-daoist-dialectics/

In terms of stories, there’s also an article on Red Sails of three short stories (one of which is very Daoist) and how they relate to ideas from Dialectical Materialism.

Here are the stories: https://redsails.org/on-three-short-stories/#fn8

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.

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.