chapotraphouse

Do you think "not teaching great man theory" means you stop mentioning individual people in history lmao. Like does not teaching kids great man theory mean we don't teach them who Lenin is either?

Like obviously socialist history education would focus on historical materialism but that doesn't mean that you start hiding the names of the evil men who did the things that came before. They should learn the names, and learn to spit on them.

I agree! But the children should still be taught about the functionaries of the Great Satan.

This is one of the contributing factors of the USSR, after all. They fell for liberal propaganda about how things work, obscuring the realities of how they actually work under capitalism. All those Soviet academics lauding Peristroika and expecting Russia to join as an equal partner in the liberal order found a very different situation in reality.

If we do not displace this propaganda we will fall victim to it. Teach the children about the realities of liberalism. Teach them about the full violence of the wars and the genocides and the disposession and how every president helped out as best they could, manufacturing consent and creating policy on behalf of the ruling class.

The way the system works can be hard to internalize. It is not great man theory but it is also not just structural forces. Structural forces, the ruling class, effect their interests through people who think it is themselves who are in charge, at least most of the time. It is only when they step out of line that they learn how the system really works, and even then they cling to some self-aggrandizing falsehoods. Every ghoul in bourgeois political office can choose to buck this order and either does not (maintaining their position) or does so (losing their position).

Basically... base and superstructure is something that I think is underemphasized when it comes to the political class. Presidents go in superstructure, of course.