/lit/ - Literature

>>17401531
It made me more techno-skeptical than anything else. Even Steinbeck seemed to have harbored some form of it, judging from the way he described the machines "raping" the soil.

>>17401546
And he was right. Soil erosion is still a problem all across the United States. Even though we aren’t having a single moment catastrophe like the Dust Bowl top soil has never been thinner and it’s from year in and year out poor farming techniques that only puts money in the hands of pharmaceutical and petrochemical companies

>>17401531
I am a socialist now, but being forced to read that shit in highschool, in a class where everything BUT it's political themes were dissected made me fucking hate him, the book, and his prose. I really should try to read it again some time.

>>17401531
I love Steinbeck but I'm unsure "socialist" is the word

>>17401531
My boomer moms whole generation read this in high school and it didn’t turn them into socialists

>>17401531
Why would you ever waste your time with “theory” anyways

>>17401531
East of Eden is better

>>17401608
As someone that read it in highschool I can tell you that it's specifically because it's patent as a historical character study and not a direct plea against the economic conditions of the time. We were inundated with bootstrap and "back in the olden days x happened and look it's in the book!" Who the fuck is going to explain what a union, the actual cause of the stock market crash, or how close we all are to being homeless in a tent city to fucking 15 year old kids trapped in the belly of the commodification machine? It's fucking high school reading. It's like they purposely make it an awful experience to ruin good books and make the masses not look back at it. A desensitization to literature with a punch. I've been programmed to despise those types of books.

They say California is a garden of eden
A paradise to live in or see
But believe it or not you won’t find it so hot
If you ain’t got the do-re-mi
If you ain’t got the do-re-mi boys
You ain’t got the do-re-mi

>>17401531
It's definitely got socialist themes, but I think the emotion of it is more important than the politics of it. It'll definitely make anyone who reads it skeptical of capitalism and 'progress.'

>>17401531
>when this book can turn anyone who reads it into a socialist
Bullshit. If anything it's a cautionary tale of ludicrous wishful thinking ("let's all go to Callyfornee and live in paradise") while blatantly putting your trust, safety and extremely little savings into such great unknowns. The solution is not to take the socialist route but instead use your fucking brains and not get yourself into bad situations.

>>17401758
Obviously going to California isn’t a parable for dream land socialism, it’s a reflection on invisible hands and market forced driving them to go there after bad corporate practices fucked up their land and got them in debt. Of course it wasn’t as good as they were told it was. It was a farcical joke played by marketing agents and bastardized by the poor. Fucking retard.

>>17401565
That has nothing to do with technology though and everything to do with government subsidies promoting cash crops. Crop rotation would solve this problem.

>>17401807
It’s both because mere crop rotation will not solve it. In fact many of these farms to already use a rotation of wheat/onions/barley. The other part of the problem is that they don’t employ permanent cover crop and they bust up the top soil every time they harvest and sow.

>>17401707
I disagree that emotion can be divorced from the politics when it comes to socialism.

Marx's point isn't "Hey look, this is how capitalism works," it's "This is how capitalism works and it's a fucking abomination holy shit."

Without the emotional component, why would you CARE about the system running on human blood? Why wouldn't you simply note it as a curiosity and wonder how to get more energy from the ground bones of the average worker?

>>17401531

>>17401911
Lol the USSR was such a shit hole. Fuck Stalinist motherfuckers cannot get shit straight to save their lives. Literally a parody of themselves. The Okies were basically analogous to the Ukrainians one had to move to California and work in fruit orchards and the other got Holodomor’d gee I wonder if I should be a cringe authoritarian boot licker???

>>17401911
That's like when some Soviet cosmonauts came to the U.S. to train with American astronauts for the Apollo-Basedeuz mission back in 1975. The cosmonauts were blown away when they witnessed how "average" Americans easily afforded a modest home, a car, and personal luxuries like televisions and nice clothing, and how our stores had plenty of merchandise available. At first they thought it was a trick until they saw that same American lifestyle in several cities.

>>17401970
>Apollo-Basedeuz
Wow. A script changed it from Apollo-S O Y E U Z.

>>17401828
oh, interesting. thanks for fact checking

>>17401649

>>17401531
FDR's monetary policy and The New Deal made the great depression far worse than it had any business being. You're a fucking a retard.

>>17401531
No, I’d much rather read the Rapes of Gwrath

>>17402275
>MUH FREE MARKET WILL SOLVE THE PROBLEMS IT CAUSES REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
>PLEASE NO SOCIALISM BETTER RED TGHAN DEAD AMIRITE UGHHHHGG PLS GIB ME TRAD WIFE BABY PLS
>WHY WONT WOMEN WHO I HATE TALK TO ME WHEN I TELL THEM ABOUT THE HISTORY OF ROOOOOOOOOOOMEEEEE
>WHY WONT THEY TOUCH MY ROME BONER
>MAGA AND CUTE ANIME GIRSL ARE MY FAVORITE PICTUREES BUT I CANT TELL MY MOMMY THAT IM A FAGGGGGGGGGOTTTT WHO LOVES HOMOSEXUALS AND UGLY FLABBY MEN
>PLEASE LETS BE LIKE THE VIKINGS BUT WITH CAPITALISM HNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

>>17402298
>Wall of apoplectic, ass-blasted all-cap greentext
The prosecution rests its case your honor.

>>17401619
this

>>17401531
>Fuck capitalists.
Absolute midwit take.

>>17401531
if I wanted to read about tiddy-sucking and poverty I'd pick up a National Geographic.

>>17401931
I’ve got a copy of GoW published in 1965 in the USSR.
The afterword is foaming at the mouth praise of the book for showing the evils of capitalism. Literal commie propaganda. All the while bashing East of Eden and Of Mice And Men as ‘having no literary value and merit whatsoever’.

>>17402947
>All the while bashing East of Eden and Of Mice And Men as ‘having no literary value and merit whatsoever’.
East of Eden is better lol

God this is depressing

>>17402272
Why, you better go back to beautiful Texas
Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee
California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see
But believe it or not you won't find it so hot
If you ain't got the do re mi

>>17401828
Ken Burns did a pretty exhaustive documentary about the Dust Bowl called... The Dust Bowl.
Can recommend if you are intrested the causes and the price.

>>17402298
Your meds. Now.

Steinbeck must be the worst nobel prize pick ever.

>>17402981

>>17403027
Eat my whole ass hole you stupid fucking urbanite mental nigger

>>17402993
Oh yeah I watched that I’m not at all saying that we’re primed for another dust bowl cataclysmic moment I’m saying our current methods are effecting a similar top soil loss but at a much slower pace but it’s still a major problem if you think generationally https://youtu.be/QfTZ0rnowcc

>>17403057
You want to buy you a home or a farm that can't deal nobody harm
Or take your vacation by the mountains or sea
Don't swap your old cow for a car, you better stay right where you are
You better take this little tip from me
'Cause I look through the want ads every day
But the headlines on the papers always say
If you ain't got the do re mi boys you ain't got the do re mi
Why, you better go back to beautiful Texas
Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee

>>17403027
He was a huge commie, so I'm sure that played a role.

>>17403122
source? I'm interested

>>17401807
>>17401828
It’s also the GMO crops from Monsanto. They are harder on the soil than non-GMO variants of the same crop.

if this is all you can say from this book then tomorrow you'll read ayn rand's atlas shrugged and automatically write the opposite, after tomorrow you'll pick up some chomsky shit to be back to the point you are now... only if you didn't read the plots on wikipedia or somewhere else

>>17403195
>GMO bad

found the american. gmo crops just grow bigger and produce more food. so of course they're "harder" on the soil.

>>17403395
Europeans have way more regs on them than Americans. Socio-economically they are quite bad by the way. I do not believe there is significant bodily harm caused by Ghent however. The problem with GMOs is that it turns farmers into sharecroppers for pharma via patent laws and proprietary blends on herbicide/fungicide/pesticide mixes that are designed to work with the genes of the seeds.

>>17401531
While we're writing about Steinbeck, I have an edition of his first book, "Cup of Gold", that is drenched in tar or something so that you really get the pirate feeling of it, it was a pretty fun experience reading it, would recommend.

>>17403395
They also modify them to be resistant to insecticides and week killers. The unintended consequence is that when the crops pollinate there are trace amounts of those chemicals in the pollen that slowly poisons the surrounding greenery. Currently Monsanto is experimenting with putting an Agent Orange offshoot into crops now that Round Up is getting banned everywhere not America.

>>17403568
Glyphosate (RoundUp) was found culpable of causing cancer in a class action suit in the US. It’s on its way out here too thank God. Fuck pharmashills.

>>17401876
That's not really what I meant. I meant I felt that the emotional relationships between the characters of the novels was the more important thing than the politics of the story.

>>17401546
Marxism (which doesn't monopolize socialism, a movement that pre-dates Marxism) is a cult of technological progress.