Bonus nonsense:
Glittering Images by Camille Paglia
I stopped reading after this horrendous introduction. I would describe the prose as Redditor adjacent. The author identifies as a civil rights era liberal and atheist, while condemning black art and Piss Christ. There were some pretty pictures in the book tho. I don't know who this author lady is/was but she sucks. 2/10
E: if you look this lady up, as many in the comments have done already, turns out she's a racist, transphobic pedophile. classic anticommunist
"Marxism is unconcerned with magic"
Magic is totally compatible with Marxism and dialectical materialism because the second it has a real impact on material reality, it forms a relationship with reality.
If magic was real, the only thing that changes for Marxists is the nature of the contradictions.
I read a story set in a magical world, written by a commie, with essentially this viewpoint, and it was the best story in that setting I've ever read. Which is a low bar considering what the setting is, but still.
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It works the same for sci-fi stuff too, since sci-fi is just magic in denial. If you want to build an interesting world, you can do it pretty easily by creating the base reality, then setting up your poles/classes/conflicts, and just kinda playing them forwards.
World has no magic/sci-fi thing. Then magic/sci-fi thing is introduced. Contradiction is formed between the powers of new thing and the old state of affairs. The capabilities of new thing make old way obsolete, but existing power structures use their momentum to resist/suppress new thing so they can maintain control.
Of course you can just pretend new thing is industrial labor and old thing is the way of kings. Then your world maps 1:1 to what we know.
Well, you can do this, and a lot of sci fi does, but it's not the best possible analysis you can make. If you treat the magic or sufficiently advanced technology as its own thing, you can approach it with a somewhat unique analysis, which I tend to appreciate a lot more. But honestly, mapping it 1:1 at least allows some form of Marxist analysis, which is better than what you'll actually find in the vast majority of fantasy and sci-fi writing.
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Coming up with novel conflicts in the new system is what makes things really fresh and unique. I think Asimov did a decent job with this in Foundation where the primary contradictions went necessarily class based, but instead information based.
Still, just ripping off the world historical dialectic conditions creates a relating and compelling story/world. Mainly because it's easy for the reader to parse and understand, while also making it easy to keep track of.
Indeed.
I know a few people who claim to hate Marxism and couldn't tell you what dialectical materialism is, and then they turn around and say the stories with a believable dialectical analysis are good worldbuilding and the ones that don't bother really suck.
I hate dealing with liberals.
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